#tons of stuff optimized for nothing but cost

[anonymusbosch]

on the dresser next to me is a landline phone.

it's a mass-manufactured piece, fairly recent, impersonal and uncharismatic. its plastic receiver smacks of CAD.

if I pick up the receiver, it feels balanced in my hand. the surface is gently textured and easy to grip with little thought. holding it to my ear, the microphone aligns with my mouth with my hand in a very natural position. it is made for the shape of a hand and a head, and though it will not fit everyone perfectly, it will fit many well.

it is not meant to be grasped around the middle like an old landline but held with the fingers, weight pressed gently into the base of the thumb. the way it sits in the receiver invites it to be held this way. all of the buttons are reachable by the thumb as it sits in the hand, tilted upright by its center of mass. there's a little bar on the 5 key, like there is on my computer's number pad, locating the keypad even in the dark.

the material of the case is a black plastic. i'm not versed enough to guess its composition by feel, but this isn't an outdoor application or one subject to harsh chemical attack, so it probably lacks some of the stabilizers that would be present for those uses. however, the label under the base proclaims it is UL listed, so there are some flammability and electrical considerations which it must meet; the charging contacts of the handset pass directly through the plastic case, so the material is probably rated for electrical contact and resistant to burning. the outer shell bears the mark of two halves closed together by a snap fit; it's rechargeable and not meant to be disassembled. the two halves are drafted opposite directions; they are tapered slightly to ease their ejection from the mold. the surface which the buttons are on obscures the marks from the ejector pins by sizing them to match the buttons - someone made the choice to shape the pins as rounded rectangles, rather than circles, to harmonize their imprint on the material.

you can press the button slightly before its press registers - and you can tell, by feel, when that press occurs. the force to press the button has been chosen with intent, and the feedback to the user is part of the design.

putting the phone back into its base, it settles easily even if casually dropped. its tapered shape and weight guide it back onto its charger. setting it down from various heights, it's hard not to get it to settle into its charging position. how carefully tuned the guides are, and how subtle!

turning it around in my hand, I can't see the place where the material entered the mold. whoever designed the mold probably placed the gate where it wouldn't be visible to the consumer. its absence is observable.

to design an object whose assembly is invisible, tolerances must be controlled closely and account must be made for the shrinkage and warping of parts as they cool from the mold. to maintain the closure along the length of the receiver, the thin-walled plastic case is probably stiffened by ribs. a designer may have argued with a molder about whether those ribs' sides really needed to be angled at 3 degrees or whether 2 degrees would suffice. probably a tool was cut from soft steel to test the shape of the components and make adjustments before more money was spent on a hard steel tool that would last for perhaps 100,000 moldings before the slight wear on it might mean the pieces no longer fit. probably there were additional moving pieces in that mold to form features on the sides that the designer and molder negotiated around until the volume button on the side could be made without a side action. probably the first parts came back not fitting together well; probably the pressure was increased in the mold or something; probably the designer adjusted some ribs to make it easier to close the halves; probably the snap features were adjusted as well; possibly many test assemblies were performed and someone found that the snaps farthest from the gate had poor weld lines and needed to be redesigned so that one out of a thousand didn't break in assembly because that was too high a failure rate; possibly they redesigned a piece to nest better amongst its many copies for more efficient shipping; probably they went through another round of tool modifications to confirm that the changes did what they wanted; probably they sampled another couple dozen pieces off the hard mold; probably many someones put it though its paces to test the antenna and verify the battery life and drop-test it and make sure the battery doesn't explode and that the pieces don't come apart in high temperatures and the thing can't catch fire if there's an electrical short and and and

probably at least a hundred people touched this phone, one way or another, so that it can be formed and assembled and tested and shipped and maintained and land here on my nightstand where I will accidentally dial it while being insufferable on a tumblr post.

the bed I built has marks of its inexpert construction plainly visible, as do the curtains I sewed. my mugs have my fingerprints embedded in the ceramic; some sit heavily and inexpertly in the hand; others balance more gently. the human touch in them is obvious.

part of mass manufacturing's goal is often to conceal the marks of making. the choices are still there.

theres this idea ive been chewing on for a couple months about the effects of machine manufacturing on the aesthetics of our living spaces. i am of course a big fan of machine manufacturing! but i think like....if you have somehting that was made by a person, by hand, they had to make a choice about every inch of that thing. the object is suffused with human choice. and when an object is machine manufacutred, that's not really true! i mean, someone designed it of course. but they probably designed it in like, cad. they designed it as a conceptual object, it's not inch-by-inch suffused with choices. im not anti AI art but i think this is my strongest anti ai art impulse, it makes it easier to make art that is not suffused with human choice, which will probably make human-choice-coated art somewhat less common, which is a bit of a bummer. obviously human choices go into AI art but they go into ai art the same way human choices go into a CAD-designed object, its on a coarser level

[alexanderwales]

I'm coming close to the end of FF7 Remake, and I think it's possible that I just don't enjoy JRPGs as much as I did when I was in high school. There's so much that feels annoying and dated from a game design perspective, and this is a remake that was presumably trying to bring the game into the modern era.

I beat a little sidequest boss and then had to run back to a bench for some healing, and just kept thinking to myself "why am I being forced to waste my time?" I get it in Dark Souls, where there's a tension between pushing forward and risking it or running back to a bonfire and keeping what you've got, trying to decide whether or not you're going to gamble. Here? There's no penalty for going back to the bench, and nothing interesting happens. If you die, you just restart, you're not condemned to doing a corpse run.

But the run back to the bench took something like two minutes of my time, so the main incentive not to do it was that it was annoying, and the only reason that I did it was because it was the optimal thing to do.

The potions come in three forms at the moment: potion, hi-potion, and mega potion, which heal increasingly more health at greatly higher cost. In gil-to-health ratios, potion is the big winner. So the optimal thing to do, if you're low on health between encounters, is to just chug potion after potion after potion and save the mega potions for when you're in combat, especially because you pick up tons of potions as you go. The main reason not to do this? It's annoying. It's irritating to just sit there for half a minute doing inputs.

It's very true that gamers will optimize the fun out of any game if allowed to do so, but this feels like a case where they could easily have included some kind of option to make drinking multiple potions more rapid-fire. Maybe the intent was to annoy me, I don't know.

The combat system is also annoying me, because there are some precision and timing problems. I'm used to Arkham-style games where the movements are fluid, even if they're cheating to get that effect. Or if not that style, then I'm used to Souls-likes where there's some precision to the attacks and counter-attacks. But FF7 Remake doesn't feel like it's got much going for it in the combat department. Attacks are hard to land because the hit boxes are kind of garbage and the attack animations seem to assume particular sizes and shapes of enemies that aren't actually how the game works. Attacks are hard to dodge because there's always a ton of stuff going on, the hit boxes suck, and I don't actually have that much control over my character. That, along with the fact that some of the attacks seem like they're just auto-hitting. There's also the fact that a lot of these enemies aren't being fought too many times: you beat a boss your first time against it, so you're learning its patterns as you go, rather than dying and learning as in a Souls-like.

(I had a very annoying moment with Barret where I used one of his gun-arm powers against an enemy and had the whole shot just slam into the side of a cargo container because of how the game decided to execute that command. It felt like the thing being demanded of me was to use an awkward angle to determine how arbitrary lines are being drawn.)

I'm really feeling like I need to go back to FF7 Original to see how it compares, or at least the Midgar part that Remake covers. The original is $11 on Steam, but promises "now with online features", so maybe I'll give that a pass.

If you have suggestions for what the pinnacle of modern JRPG design is, I'd be interested in hearing what it is. If it's this ... yeah, maybe just no longer for me.

[shabinmp]

why your ads are bleeding money (and how to fix it) 💸

#performance-marketing #digital-marketing #ads #marketing-tips #business-growth

okay besties, we need to talk about something that's been keeping me up at night...

your ad campaigns are probably wasting SO much money right now and you don't even know it 😭

i've been managing ad budgets for the past 5 years (yeah, i'm that person who gets excited about spreadsheets and conversion rates) and i see the same mistakes EVERYWHERE.

so grab your favorite drink because we're about to dive into some real talk about performance marketing ☕

the tea: what actually is performance marketing? 🫖

performance marketing = you only pay when something actually happens

unlike traditional advertising where you pay for "exposure" (aka throwing money into the void), performance marketing is like:

pay per click

pay per conversion

pay per sale

pay per lead

basically, you're paying for RESULTS not just pretty pictures that nobody sees.

it's giving accountability energy and i'm here for it ✨

why everyone's ads are flopping rn 📉

1. the ios update that broke everything

remember when apple decided to mess with everyone's business model? yeah, ios 14.5 really said "privacy first" and now:

facebook can't track users as well

attribution is all wonky

everyone's roas looks terrible

marketers are crying into their laptops

2. rising ad costs everywhere

competition is FIERCE out there:

cpm went up like 📈

everyone's fighting for the same eyeballs

small businesses getting priced out

bigger budgets needed for same results

3. people are blind to basic ads now

we've all developed ad blindness because:

everyone looks the same

generic stock photos everywhere

boring copy that says nothing

zero personality or authenticity

the channels that actually work in 2025 🎯

google ads (the reliable bestie)

pros:

high intent traffic (people are literally searching for your stuff)

tons of data and optimization options

works for basically every business type

cons:

can get expensive fast

requires constant optimization

learning curve is steep

my hot tip: use performance max campaigns but don't just set it and forget it. feed it good data and creative assets.

meta ads (the drama queen)

pros:

incredible creative testing capabilities

massive audience reach

detailed targeting options (when they work)

cons:

attribution is messy post-ios

creative fatigue happens fast

algorithm changes monthly it seems

my hot tip: broad targeting + killer creative > detailed targeting + boring ads

tiktok ads (the new kid)

pros:

lower cpms than meta/google

younger audiences are here

creative formats are fun and engaging

cons:

limited targeting options

attribution tracking is rough

not great for all business types

my hot tip: if your audience is under 35, you NEED to be testing here

email marketing (the forgotten hero)

pros:

highest roi of any channel (seriously)

you own the audience

automation possibilities are endless

cons:

requires list building strategy

deliverability can be tricky

people think it's "old school"

my hot tip: if you're not collecting emails, you're leaving money on the table. period.

the metrics that actually matter 📊

forget vanity metrics, here's what to track:

roas (return on ad spend)

how much revenue per dollar spent

aim for 3:1 minimum for most businesses

higher ltv customers = can accept lower roas

cac (customer acquisition cost)

total cost to get one customer

include all costs, not just ad spend

should be way less than customer lifetime value

ltv (lifetime value)

how much a customer is worth over time

most businesses calculate this wrong

should be 3-5x higher than cac

conversion rate

percentage of people who actually buy

landing page optimization is key

small improvements = big revenue gains

my actual framework for not sucking at ads 🔥

step 1: get your tracking right

set up google analytics 4 properly

implement conversion tracking on all platforms

use utm parameters for everything

test your tracking before spending money

step 2: know your numbers

calculate real cac and ltv

understand your margins

set realistic roas targets

know your breakeven points

step 3: creative testing system

test one variable at a time

document everything

kill losing ads fast

scale winners aggressively

step 4: audience strategy

start broad, then narrow down

use first-party data when possible

create lookalike audiences from best customers

exclude existing customers (unless retargeting)

step 5: landing page optimization

match your ad to your landing page

mobile-first design always

clear value proposition

remove friction from checkout

the mistakes that are costing you money 💀

mistake #1: optimizing too early

algorithms need time to learn. stop touching everything after 2 days challenge.

mistake #2: focusing on the wrong metrics

clicks don't pay bills. focus on revenue and profit, not vanity metrics.

mistake #3: terrible creative

stop using stock photos. show real people using your product. tell actual stories.

mistake #4: ignoring mobile

70%+ of traffic is mobile. if your site sucks on mobile, your ads will fail.

mistake #5: not testing enough

if you're not testing, you're guessing. allocate 20% of budget to testing new things.

tools i actually use (and love) 🛠️

free tools:

google analytics 4 (tracking)

google tag manager (implementation)

facebook pixel helper (debugging)

google keyword planner (research)

paid tools:

triple whale (attribution)

klaviyo (email marketing)

hotjar (user behavior)

canva pro (creative design)

budget-friendly:

google ads editor (bulk changes)

facebook ads library (competitor research)

similar web (traffic analysis)

ahrefs (seo and competitor intel)

real talk: what's coming next 🔮

the cookieless future

third-party cookies are dying, so:

focus on first-party data collection

email lists become more valuable

creative quality matters more

contextual targeting makes a comeback

ai and automation

smart bidding is getting better

creative generation tools improving

predictive analytics becoming standard

human strategy still needed

privacy-first marketing

transparency builds trust

clear consent processes

value exchange for data

privacy-compliant tracking methods

my challenge for you 📝

pick ONE thing from this post and implement it this week:

□ fix your tracking setup □ calculate your real ltv and cac □ launch a creative test □ optimize your mobile experience □ start collecting emails □ analyze your best customers

seriously, don't just bookmark this and forget about it. take action.

the bottom line ✨

performance marketing isn't rocket science, but it's not "set it and forget it" either.

you need:

proper tracking and measurement

clear understanding of your numbers

systematic approach to testing

focus on long-term customer value

willingness to adapt and learn

most importantly: stop trying to hack your way to success. build systems, test constantly, and optimize based on data not feelings.

drop a comment if this helped you or if you have questions! always happy to talk shop about marketing stuff 💪

follow for more marketing real talk and occasional rants about why your website probably sucks

tags: #performance-marketing #digital-marketing #facebook-ads #google-ads #marketing-strategy #small-business #ecommerce #marketing-tips #advertising #roi #conversion-optimization #marketing-metrics #ad-spend #marketing-automation #email-marketing #social-media-marketing #ppc #sem #marketing-analytics #customer-acquisition

reblog if you found this helpful! 🔄

[crystalelemental]

Sync Grid Analysis - Glacia, Norman, Tate, Lucy, Raihan

Five new grid expansions!  Three commons, one five star, and one PokeFair hell expansion that demands 5/5, thanks guys.

Let's start with my excitement: Glacia.  She actually got an expansion!  With Focus Ground, TM: Durable, Healthy Buffer 5, and Synchro Healing 1.   This...is not helping.  In fact I'm not convinced you tried at all.   Realistically, you give up stuff for this, and that stuff is Team Toughen Up, or your Hostile Environments. Given that Healthy Buffer only works at full HP, and no amount of defense buffs will allow one use of Gradual Healing to bring you up to full, Glacia should probably drop Toughen Up for Ice Beam Hostile Environment, and aim to land 30% freeze chances in Gauntlet for fun and profit.  Also, fun fact: Healthy Buffer is what Lysandre has.  You know, the shitty rendition that doesn't help against sync nukes?  That one.  That's what they gave this suffering support in 2022, over three years into the game.  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

Norman! He got Standfast 3 and 5.  So immediate garbage.  Hostile Environment 2 is the only worthwhile thing on this entire grid.  Static Shock 5 is his only sync multiplier.  They Valerie'd him.  Seriously, I could do the calculations, but this effectively means 65% damage reduction.  Considering his HP is around 700, you’d need around 1100 in recoil damage, or about 4400 damage in one Double Edge, to kill him instantly with this.  There’s a reason everyone starts at Standfast 9 now.  It’s so you don’t just drop.  A 5 and a 3 don’t come anywhere near a basic 9.  Instead, he’s a glorified paralysis bot with a weak multiplier for his sync that can never be super effective.  They massacred this man.

Tate! All he needed was Haymaker!  And they went with Cakewalk!  Immediately bad!  He gets Cakewalk and Interference Sync 5 for good mutlipliers, but then can't reach Aggravation, which wasn't doing a ton but hey, flinch bot.  Nothing is great about this, but at least he’s Psychic type?

Lucy!  Actually, not bad.  Hostile Environment Poison Fang is what I wish BP Janine had, so this is solid. Stoic and Acumen are solid for Stall, with Wrap accuracy buffs and the potential for Pokey Trap 2.  On the flip side, two 50% sync multipliers she get up herself with guaranteed Toxic.  Lucy's...legitimately not bad at all.

Raihan's expansion requires 5/5 to fully unlock, which is just a delight.  I hate this.  Anyway, 4/5 gets Weathered Warrior 3 and Trip Twice 9.  30% multiplier for sandstorm which is great, and Trip Twice lowering speed of a foe by 2.  With Rock Slide, this makes Raihan one of the premiere speed debuffers in the game. Which is kinda like being king of shit mountain, but at least the rest of it's good. Cakewalk at 5/5 at least makes sense but is notably scummy, while Sand Sync lets him set his own sand after first sync, which is, again, really scummy.  They were not lying about these nodes being set up as the best a unit can offer. They're not strictly necessary, I've seen Raihan do fine in other contexts, but these are notably powerful upgrades.  I am scared for the future.  What astonishes me, and not in a good way, is cost.  Usually, expansion nodes are much cheaper, maybe half the cost.  Raihan's are listed as full cost.  You basically remove his old grid for the new nodes.  It's literally an entirely different build.  I had to go back and check this on Wally, but yeah, it's true of him too. Which means...these nodes are outright bad.  3/5 kits tend to be pretty well optimized in most cases, and the entire benefit of a grid expansion was reduced cost for units who desperately needed some extra oomph due to older structures.  But this? This is giving up 40 energy for these four new nodes. That's an entirely different playstyle!  You'd be going 5/5 for maybe one or two in most scenarios!  I...don't like it.  This has some seriously negative implications. Cynthia may have won out after all.

[shupadoop]

I hate JKR and Drarry is my OTP

When I was a kid I adored reading, and I devoured new characters and stories. I read less and less over the years as one does because adult life is demanding. And then I very suddenly got interested in writing again in my adult life which lead me to reading again. I grabbed 4 books at a time from the library, read them on my commute, put together story ideas when they inspired me, then did the whole thing over again.

And then Covid happened (and I was in a lousy position because of non-covid things as well) and life was really fucking hard.

Suddenly the idea of consuming brand new media was overwhelming. I barely had the mental energy to do my job, or generally live my life. Becoming emotionally invested in new characters was just not on the table. So I became extremely nostalgic and threw myself into all the stuff I liked when I was about 12 (peak internet *rawr*) because it felt like seeing old friends which came with a low cost and big emotional reward.

When I was 12 Harry Potter was the absolute shit. All the cool kids shipped Drarry (but obviously we called it H/D). I went to the midnight release party for books at Chapters, I had a stone to commemorate Dobby in my garden, I had every Potter Puff MSN avatar saved on my computer.

To be drawn back to all that in the midst of JKR going on a seemingly never-ending transphobic rant was weird to say the least. When it started to become common knowledge that JKR was not the great person our pre-teen selves imaged, I thought it might be interesting to reread Harry Potter. I wondered if I a) missed any literary content as a child that could be fun to dissect later and b) if there would be any hints she had a shitty view of gender.

The answers were none whatsoever, and yes, tons, respectively. The world was inconsistent, the character motivations didn't always make much sense, the kids were in blatantly oppressive gender roles, and yes, it was racist. I remembered that even as a kid there were things I didn't like about it, but it was of such cultural importance I happily ignored the things I didn't like in exchange for revelling in the LiveJournals, and DeviantArts, and FFNs dedicated to HP.

And that's where I think the true magic happened. I have a theory that what pushed Harry Potter from a popular series to a truly household name was the community that was able to exist around it thanks to the internet as it was in those days.

Something that really struck me when I reread the books is how poorly developed Draco's character was. In my reading I expected to find a boy struggling to find his way, who was led down the wrong path, but here and there showed real capacity for change. Someone witty, and elegant, and who had the mark of someone who would be very charming if he wasn't an utter git. There was nothing of the sort; until book 6 he only appears in a few short scenes and doesn't have much personality at all. The image I had of him was one entirely built by a bunch of randos on teh interwebz that collectively decided to take all the parts they liked and throw away the rest and tell amazing stories of personal growth, and resilience, and love. I think that's truly remarkable, and absolutely beautiful.

This is what brought me back to Harry Potter fanfic. This is why in my covid-addled, anxiety-ridden, overworked adulthood I spend my me-time reading Drarry fics. I love you wonderful tumblrverse shippers and your refusal to let TERFdome take your optimism.

[ramblingguy54]

You know, Marcy being stuck in the tube reminds me of jeri being trapped in the d-reaper(hell, marcy reminds me of jeri in someways)

     My apologies for not getting to this ask in awhile. I’ve been busy with stuff and also admittedly lazy to an extent in my free time, too.

     Anyways, this parallel you're presenting of Marcy & Jeri being similar is certainly something to consider. They're both kids who wanted to to a different world because they wanted to be stronger people in not just an emotional sense, but physically speaking too.

     Leomon commented on despite how tiny & frail Jeri looked, she had the spiritual strength of something greater than that or as he said in the English dub, "You're such a little thing, but you have a lion's heart.", which showed the underlying potential Jeri had in overcoming her serious demons, if she simply applied herself more in whatever the kid wanted to do in life. 

     Marcy has an arc of development in this same sense, due to wanting to travel to another reality where she could become stronger. She didn't want to be always seen as a clumsy know it all, who can’t fend for herself. Marcy did have Anne steal the Calamity Box in order to keep them together as friends in a different reality always, but it wasn’t just this reason alone. This girl has a defined low self-esteem, which she looked for validation in her friendship through Anne & Sasha. When Marcy’s parents dropped the news about moving away outta state she flipped out because if this girl can’t have the sense of validation, being two best friends for life, surrounding herself, than what does that make Marcy Wu, overall? You can apply this same mindset to Leomon as well, given how much Jeri admired, respected, and loved Leomon as the father she never had.

     This brings me into a more speculative territory, once again, when looking into the potential core dynamic Marcy Wu could have with her father, akin to Jeri’s complicated relationship against the other. I do believe there’s a good chance Marcy’s relationship with her father is the most problematic and not so much the mother, honestly. After all, who did Marcy put a shit ton of her trust into? King Andrias. Who crushed Marcy’s hopes, dreams, and plummeted her self-esteem to a greater level? King Motherfucking Andrias. Andrias presented himself as an outlet parental figure Marcy could put her faith into and so much more. Marcy didn’t feel like she had anyone to truly turn to after the actions this kid committed in having Anne & Sasha steal the Calamity Box for her as a last ditch resort to flee from their reality. 

     Marcy was riddled with guilt, so she thought this strong, authoritative, and seemingly compassionate adult, who lent her an open ear and shoulder to cry on, if need be, would give herself so much needed relief. Sadly, this wasn’t the case for Marcy’s faith in Andrias, or tragically Jeri’s short time spent with Leomon in Tamer’s run time. These two young girls looked for a sense of closure in these two respective adult male figures, who could’ve saved them from their inner demons. Andrias’ real intent was to only use her as a figurative chess piece then brutally toss the girl aside afterwards. Leomon’s unfortunate fate at Beelzemon’s hands was basically out of his control. Leomon wanted to prove to himself, Jeri, and most importantly Beelzemon that having serious strength isn’t “real power”, rather it’s the bonds you obviously form with other people making you so in the long run. This costed Leomon his life & Jeri’s little self-esteem she was barely holding onto, as long as he was apart of her life forever.

     These two young girl leads suffered greatly from putting their trust into who they thought were responsible adult fatherly role models, where one in relished deceitful manipulation of this kid’s heart and the other was killed unjustly by another emotional wreck of a Digimon named, Impmon. Jeri & Marcy were dealt serious low blows by their connections to these two respective figures. Their faith hadn’t been just shaken, but torn to pieces because said admiration led these two down a path of serious heartbreak. Marcy was given a brutal wake up call from Andrias having to realize he never truly loved, nor cared, about her well being. All he saw was some tool for a means to an end, nothing more or less. Jeri was sent into a broken state of depression from Leomon’s sudden murder at Beelzemon’s cold blooded slaying of him. Jeri had already lost her biological mother years ago and didn’t have a healthy relationship with her hard-lined father or new step mother either, which made Leomon’s passing all the more devastating for her.

     These respective heroine’s didn’t want to be alone, as it was anything far worse than the most unimaginable pain one could physically inflict upon somebody, period. Jeri resigned herself to viewing Leomon’s untimely death as, “Loneliness, is my destiny.”, which the D-Reaper feasted upon those feelings of dreadful heartbroken defeat. Andrias very much pulled a D-Reaper in calculating the reveal of Marcy’s hidden true colors, by laughing in front of the main trio of girls about how his most “favorite associate” brought them into Amphibia’s world to begin with all because she didn’t want to be forsaken to a life of solitude, based around wherever state her parents were going to move to. 

     Marcy’s optimism, pride, and hope in Andrias were shot down instantly by a malicious ruler, who didn’t care about what needed to be done for universal and dimensional conquest. Even if it meant absolutely shattering a child’s hope in finding an adult that finally understood her needs, basically. I still do firmly stand on the theory that Marcy’s father, while well intent, doesn’t know how to properly express his compassionate side. Much like Jeri’s father, it’s very likely he does care for Marcy, but had a hard time understanding the kid’s needs or how she emotionally differed from other children, possibly. Marcy’s father could indeed share the problem Jeri’s had of not being a good parent still very much wanting to change their ways, but not knowing how to go about doing it in the proper manner.      Whenever I think back to the father’s line, “Marcy, you have to understand. Come back here, young lady!”,  I’m under the impression he’s trying his hardest to connect with Marcy, though for whatever reasons we’ll find out in Season 3 soon enough doesn’t seem to get how being empathetic toward his daughter works. Jeri’s father had this exact same issue of empathy, where instead of trying to teach her daughter harsh lessons of responsibility, like say going from school and back home without vehicle transportation, he should’ve comforted his kid more about his previous wife’s passing.

     Throw in a mechanical menace taking advantage of their fragile state of mind and emotion giving us on Hell of an unsettling parallel between two kids, who’ve been dealt a seriously bad hand by their own separate series of events. If Marcy’s father turns out to be a problematic parent after all, then this detailed post of mine will age like a fine wine in how much Marcy & Jeri share as children with serious emotional baggage stemming from parental trust & affection. Season 3 has me legit scared for what could happen to Marcy in how Anne & Sasha will have to break Andrias’ master’s hold over their dear friend, if it goes the route people have been speculating about severe possession over her free will. It would make the ultimate tragedy for Marcy’s characterization, since she wanted to be free and now must suffer under an existence of control from a creature that feels no pain, remorse, or empathy for who it chooses to hurt.

     The parallels you can draw between Marcy & Jeri is so scary it aint even funny. This is like some serious uncanny valley territory shit right here.

[sasquapossum]

Sometimes it seems like the biggest challenge in working with epoxy resin is not technique but finding the right tools and materials. Every epoxy brand behaves a bit differently. Every dye or other additive behaves a bit differently. Everything is terribly time- and temperature-sensitive, which kind of is a matter of technique but when you have to experiment and re-discover the optimal technique for every possible combination of materials it gets pretty exhausting. It's no wonder why so many things you see on video tutorials just don't work for the combination you have, and why so many of the people making those tutorials seem to specialize in a particular set of technique/material combinations they're comfortable with.

The marketplaces are all full of vendors whose products are absolutely not what they claim - or just crap. I literally left one review saying "this is none of the things it claims to be". Low-odor? Zero VOC? Hell no. This stuff stinks to high heaven and will probably kill you even at jewelry quantities if you don't wear an organic-vapor mask. Self-leveling? Nope. Crystal clear? I don't know how you can claim that for something that easily forms tons of micro-bubbles and then holds on to them with a tenacity any honey badger would envy. Most of the "opaque" dyes I've found are barely even translucent unless you add so much that it compromises the epoxy. Sealing tapes that don't hold, thickeners that don't thicken, mold-release sprays that do nothing at all - I've seen deceptive or defective products in just about every category. There's more garbage in this business than in my own (software) and that's saying something.

I'm slowly developing an arsenal of materials and techniques using those materials to create things I consider attractive (and the recipients of my self-made gifts seem to agree). I'm fortunate, though, because I don't know how anyone more cost-constrained or less persistent could get through this morass.

[inventors-fair]

A Little Foolish

One of the hardest things about designing silver-bordered cards is, making the card actually worthy of being silver-bordered. We think of Un-cards as being cards that break the rules and push the boundaries, and yes, they often do. But when you need to design one on purpose, like for the fair, sometimes that’s difficult. Games are built on rules. How do you break them while still playing the game.

A lot of times the rules that are broken are big ones. Stuff like subgames, adding extra players, dexterity games. Those are usually designed whole-cloth, so it’d be tough to do something like that this week. Other times there’s one specific theme for an Un-set that gets recurred, and if removed makes the card otherwise black-border. Cards that care about artists, fractions, watermarks, or rolling dice. These can feel tacked on sometimes, and when designing a single card you can’t really address themes. So what’s left? What are things you can do to feel silver-border that aren’t too big and bold, but also not minor enough that it feels negligible?

1: Words on Cards

Something black border can’t do is look at words on cards. It can’t reference specific words in names, in rules texts, or in flavor text. It can’t reference letters or punctuation, either. Each of those things I’ve mentioned has been referenced on Un-cards in the past, but what else can you reference? Is there a specific word that multiple cards have that you can link together somehow? Is there some quality text has that you can use?

2: Art

We don’t require art here, and it’s hard for anyone to find art that can serve to be functional. You can always make it yourself (we tend to love that), but you can always reference other cards’ art, too. Goblin Habberdasher is a famous one, as well as the Art Menace card. Is there any other common theme you can use? Or some other trait that can be exploited? I will warn you here, make sure your definitions are clear. While people love to argue what is a hat or not, you don’t want it to be so debatable that it happens every game.

3: Player Actions

This is a scary one if done poorly, but there’s so much design space here. Silver-border cards let you request actions from the players. There’s the famous one, removing your pants so that hurloon wrangler isn’t unblockable, but there’s a lot of safer, less demanding options, too. Personally, I like how Magic Word turns a 0 cost ability into something fun. What are some other small, easy to perform, easy to confirm actions that you can ask players to perform? Think very carefully when you take this route. If you can imagine any situation where the action would be difficult for some people, unkind, indecent, or at worst harmful, then it should be avoided.

4: Physical Space

Cards are put on the battlefield but how? Cards can be to the left, the right, on top of, in the middle of, touching, avoiding, or doing nothing to other cards. Heck, they can even be referencing other things in the real world. Hoisted Hireling is a fun example of this. This is another one where there’s a ton of space, but there’s a reason why. If too many of these cards exist at once, you get a set that turns into sudoku, where everything has an optimal place it should be. Luckily for us, we aren’t designing whole sets! Once again, though, be aware that not everyone lives the same life as you. Plenty of people who play on coffee tables or just floors will not get to ever properly resolve Enter the Dungeon.

~

So that’s a summary of just a few ways to make a card feel a little more deserving of its silver border. There’s plenty more than these, and I hope to see some!

-Mod Mr. ShinyObject

[astonishinglegends]

Ep 199: The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich Part 1

“It is hovering and it’s not an aircraft.” 

– The last known words of pilot Frederich Valentich at 7:12 p.m., somewhere over the Bass Strait in Australia, October 21, 1978

Description:

On Saturday, October 21, 1978, at 6:19 p.m., 20-year-old Frederick Valentich took off from Moorabbin Airport just south of Melbourne, Australia, for what was supposed to be a routine training and pleasure flight over Bass Strait to King Island. A serious student aviator, Valentich had been flying for two years and had accumulated over 150 hours of solo flying time in his goal to one day become a commercial airline pilot. Although rated for night flying by instrument, the sun was still up, and with clear visibility and good weather, there was no reason Valentich shouldn’t have easily completed this trip, which he’d taken several times before. However, just over halfway through the flight at 7:06 p.m., Valentich contacted Melbourne Flight Service Unit and reported seeing an unidentified craft above him, traveling at high speed and shining four bright lights. Valentich would radio back a few minutes later that it didn’t appear to be any known aircraft, and now it had even more unusual characteristics: it was long, shiny metallic, and a green light was emanating from it. Even more unsettling, this craft he described was deliberately toying with him as it orbited above while his plane’s engine was sputtering. At 7:11 p.m., the last statement anyone would hear from Valentich would be that the object was still hovering and that it was not an aircraft. Valentich and his plane had vanished at that moment, but whether it was an elaborate hoax, a deliberate crash, or merely a misidentification combined with a mechanical failure, no investigation has been able to determine. What is not in doubt is that the case of Frederick Valentich remains one of Australia’s biggest aviation mysteries, if not in all of UFO lore.

Location:

Moorabbin Airport, where Frederick Valentich took off from on October 21, 1978, headed for King Island across Bass Strait.

Reference Links:

The Frederick Valentich case on the original Unsolved Mysteries, Season 5, Episode 2 on Amazon Prime

“Disappearance of Frederick Valentich” on Wikipedia

Cessna 182 “Skylane”

Valentich’s missing aircraft report online, from the National Archives of Australia

Download of Valentich’s missing aircraft report as a PDF

Bass Strait

Moorabbin Airport

“'Truth' was out there after all –An accidental discovery sheds new light on the mysterious disappearance of a pilot in 1978, writes Miles Kemp” from The Advertiser

Australian UFO researcher, Keith Basterfield

Melbourne, Australia

Tasmania

King Island, Tasmania

Visit King’s Island

“Biography of Bette Nesmith Graham, Inventor of Liquid Paper” on ThoughtCo.com

Bette Nesmith Graham on Wikipedia

Australian crayfish

The TCAS or Traffic collision avoidance system

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Credits:

Episode 199: The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich Part 1. Produced by Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess; Audio Editing by Sarah Vorhees Wendel. Sound Design by Ryan McCullough; Tess Pfeifle, Producer, and Lead Researcher; Research Support from the astonishing League of Astonishing Researchers, a.k.a. The Astonishing Research Corps, or "A.R.C." for short. Copyright 2021 Astonishing Legends Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

[leam1983]

Post-Quarantine Musings  - Hardspace: Shipbreaker

I book car showroom appointments for a living.

There’s more to it, seeing as I’m the office’s resident IT drone, proofreader and occasional copywriter, but it boils down to this. My job in these parlous times is to get you to strap on that dodgy graphene-filter mask you bought off of Wish or Alibaba and drive to your local showroom so you can socially distance yourself from a guy who really, really wants you to disregard the fact that payment delays on a 20K$ vehicle just isn’t a worthwhile deal in times like these. Money’s tight for everyone, but Honda, Nissan and everyone else’s plant workers need to put food on the plate - and that means buyback offers. Lots and lots of buyback offers, most of them being shockingly cheap and poorly thought-out.

Over the last few days, though, I’ve been poking at Blackbird Entertainment’s Hardspace: Shipbreaker, of which the basic setup uneasily mirrors the decidedly crapsack world we find ourselves living in, lately. Work is scarce for some, so blue-collar postings suddenly start to have some allure. What happens, then, when said blue-collar work takes you out of Earth’s gravity well?

The year is 2355 or thereabouts, and inflation’s made it so that a lower-middle class bloke having over nine million dollars in debt is totally normal. You’re one such average Joe, the game opening with the anxiety-inducing din of your cramped mega-building apartment. Your financial imprint is in shambles, creditors are after your ass, and your inbox varies between impassioned pleas from your mother and curt title lines coming from repo agencies.

You’re deep in it, safe to say.

Luckily for you, you’ve also applied to the LYNX Corporation’s Shipbreaker program, wherein all debts are shouldered by the company as well as all living expenses, so long as you don’t mind leaving your family and loved ones behind to spend your hours between work shifts in a pressurized habitat that’s essentially left out in the open space of your new workspace’s offered ship berth. The profile setup is presented diegetically as the world’s mortiferous take on Capitalism, wherein LYNX reserves the right to clone you, if you happen to sever the right fuel line at the wrong time. The company expects total obedience and even dictates who you should vote for, in the coming global elections. You’ll make millions of bucks per shift, but most of it will go to fruitlessly attempting to sponge off a debt not even your children’s children will have any prayer of making a dent in.

“But hey,” says Weaver, your supervisor, in his nonchalant Midwestern drawl, “work hard, and you too just might work off your debt, like Simmons did.”

In the beginning hours, it’s not hard to get the sense that Simmons might be a company-created chimera, a figment of corporate imagination - the Guy Who Made It.

In practice, your new job involves floating around in the zero-G confines of a spaceship berth, flanked by furnaces to smelt down what can be salvaged or repurpose what can be quickly reused. Everything else, from cots to pressurization units and loose personal O2 tanks, you have to fling down into the giant space barge that partially blots out your view of a brownish, detritus-covered Earth. Every work shift lasts fifteen minutes, and every shift comes with Work Orders, or tasks that need to be prioritized. Your tools of the trade include precision cutting lasers and beamsplitters, along with an energy-based grapple gun. The brunt of the work involves worming your way inside your Derelict of the Day, which another team’s already stripped down to the I-Beams and connecting points - and reducing all of the massive, yellow-marked solder points to slag. A little thruster work adds momentum to gigantic steel, aluminium or nanocarbon plates and walkways that you free from the ship’s armature, at which point you can slither out and guide all freed loose items and plates to either the Salvage, Furnace or Reclamation points.

Early on, it feels like you’re playing Operation inside the innards of some gigantic steel-borne beast - but the fifteen-minute timer soon starts to loom over you, as your Work Orders become increasingly complex. Soon enough, your safe and definitely OSHA-compliant procedures are set aside for hacky and mildly suicidal means of reaching your goals as quickly as possible.

Normally, creating a safe working environment involves depressurizing each wreck from within, using the provided consoles. Nevermind why, but LYNX supplies its wrecks with a remaining atmosphere and plenty of unsecured flotsam floating around. If you’re on the clock, you can also just hang onto the pilot’s cockpit with your magnetic gloves, aim your laser at the front windshield - and then hold on for dear life as all ninety-seven tons of atmosphere in the hauler you’re assigned to forces its way out into the void, through a space that has about the width of a finger. The resulting force rips through the front cockpit, turning the usually easy-to-handle ‘nano panels that line the ship’s outer plating into dozens of annoyingly small fragments you’ll later have to spent long minutes bundling together and flinging down the Reclamation chute.

The same goes for fuel lines, really. You only have a few minutes left and need the few million creds an intact thruster block sells for? Cut open a hole in the ship’s flank, near the stern, expose the fuel lines, line up your shot while going as far back as you can while still having a chance to make your target - and fire away. You’ll tear the entire back half open and even possibly kill yourself, but that’s what company-produced clones and mnemonic transfer jobs are for, right?

I mean, the ship’s half-ruined and LYNX’s just lost a few cool billions of expensive tech but, hey - the thruster block’s intact (miraculously) and that’s going to cover your equipment leases being commuted to a for-life permit! Woohoo, no more payments for my precision laser!

Of course, nothing says blue-collar tedium like Space Bluegrass, and that’s what you’ll be listening to for most of your run. Shipbreaker is still definitely barren on the audio spectrum, although a good chunk of it is by design: you’re in space, in a near-complete vaccuum, and the only clear sounds you’ll ever hear are broadcast out of your suit’s radio. Everything else is muffled and distant, with even your ship-rending occasional reactor failures only manifesting as a bright glare and a low whoosh.

The main draw quite obviously is the game’s zero-G physics engine. Fans of Space Sims like Elite: Dangerous will feel right at home, with the obviously small-scale setting being less focused on your pulling off Top Gun stunts in space and more with providing chunks of metal weighing a variable amount of tons with the ponderous floatyness to be expected - and small bits with the life-ending velocity to be expected when your non-compliant shenanigans result in your helmet cracking and your air reserves oozing out. The end result is surprising, seeing as what looks like a Homeworld-era cruiser bursting open like a beached whale barely taxes an i7 7700K, 16GB setup. The game is rather lightweight, technically speaking, which allows it to be impressively forgiving, based on the two machines I was able to fiddle with, one of them an entry-level gaming rig, and the other being more of an enthusiast setup, with an i9 and 32 GBs of memory.

If anything, you’re likely to notice that there’s a bit of a disconnect between your rough, dusty and used hand-crafted environments and the polygonal and simplistic construction of the vessels you’re tasked with decommissioning. That’s mostly a result of the game needing an efficient way to handle one interactive object splitting off into potentially dozens of physics-based objects. Keeping things sleek obviously makes sense, considering, and it also helps that Hardspace rests on the handiwork of a few ex-Relic Entertainment designers. Hiigara’s natives aren’t too far off if you look at the ship designs, with only the texture work suggesting that you’re a Blue Collar Joe or Jane working on an old tug that’s had just as rough a life as you.

The question is, however, if I’d recommend it. I would, but only if you’re the type of gamer who enjoys optimizing things. Shipbreaker is built from the ground-up to either be played like a reverse Bonzai tree simulator, or as a cool physics sandbox wherein cutting open fuel lines like a moron, rupturing power cells or letting the onboard nuke go critical all become cost-effective approaches. If you do, chances are you’ll find yourself strapping on your best or worst drawl and commenting on seat-of-your-pants escapes from technical disasters like they’re just the stuff of your average Tuesday.

You’ve got a debt to clear, after all, and enough clones to turn your grisly demise into an unfortunate bump in the road.

[perfectlydeeppizza]

The Best Suppliers in The Market

With growing technology, office equipment has grown significantly to produce quality stuff that eases business operations. What we are talking about is tons of paperwork, prepared and documented as per the needs of corresponding lines of work of an establishment. These gravely contribute towards streamlining the business workflow and increasing employee productivity on a large scale. The types of equipment include office stationery to multi-colour laser printers used. Though there are business establishments that sell such objects, a need for ensuring after-sale services is essential. Machines get depreciated. Hence, guaranteed post-sale services for the devices in a cost-effective way attracts the customers vibrantly. From a customer standpoint, that is the ethics to be followed in this kind of business. There is also a need for proper management in the supply of the products and providing equipped software solutions that can lower costs and increase productivity. Offering managed printing services that can be tailored to suit your business needs is like adding a cherry on the top. Products from companies like ‘Sharp,’ ‘HP,’ ‘Xerox,’ and ‘Samsung’ are the major sellers in the Canadian markets. Sharp products have existed as one of the widely preferred office equipment producers. The uniqueness they always try to maintain in their electronic equipment production is appreciated by the tech geeks worldwide. Quality assurance is another reason why the preference goes with this lot. Their production level extends from standard desktop copiers and printers to interactive displays that are glossy and attractive. The major challenge comes for the producers is the distribution. If there isn’t any effective distribution and customer management, whatever developments made in the production level, write off as nothing. The need for Sharp products in the Canadian states forged the way for successful product supply throughout the country and even the world. They ensure to carry the top-notch selection of products to various parts as per the needs. The software solutions have helped to increase productivity and optimize the cost-to-be incurred effectively. It is necessary to ensure the availability of assistance at the beck and call of the customers. These foster the construction of credibility in their mindset. For customers to maximize the utilization of the product and get their money’s worth, their servicing needs are to be attended to without delay. Such a service should help and associate with the business firms to achieve their goals. They have to customize services for their clients since every business is distinctive according to their well-specified budget.  The growth of the client supplements the growth of their business.

[clarste]

(not same anon, but still Cannonball) More broadly, would you want the amount of luck to increase or decrease? Level difference matter more or less? Characters more balance or less? Redesigned many abilities or just leave them be? My impression is that you dislike the long cooldown of trump cards and the huge advantage of dueling over everything else, right?

...Why would I want less character balance? Well, I guess in a certain sense there’s a theory that “balance = homogeneity = boring” but honestly I would say that the power level floor needs to go up a little. The powerful characters are in about the right place for fun, but the weaker characters just feel a little pointless.

Specifically, it seems to me that the relevance of plus and minus tiles, and therefore abilities that interact with them, have been greatly overestimated by the designers. For example in the latest banner, they’re advertising Letty as a character who would be dominant on Total Assets maps because she gets +1 to her movement rolls in that ruleset (sometimes) and also her trump card penalizes all other players for landing on plus or minus tiles. Except... by the time you can actually use her trump card, plus and minus tiles are already chump change and you either aim for a better kind of tile (like battles, shops, or properties) or just land on a plus/minus tile and simply don’t care about it effect one way or another.

Essentially, no one makes a significant amount of money from Plus tiles alone, you get from either battles or property, so anything that interacts with Plus tiles is inherently bad because you want to avoid them anyway if you can. This is a general game design problem, not just a problem with a specific character's ability. Properties and battles are vastly more profitable than Plus tiles so you just don’t care. But if they weren’t that powerful, the game would slow down so much that it’d be less fun. What’s the solution to that? I dunno, I’m not a game designer, but I feel like it’d have to be complicated.

That said, I have noticed that the relative power of Plus tiles compared to Properties has gone up a little as you play on higher level maps, so maybe there is some point around which this is balanced, but I don’t know what that is, and either way it means their game has a problem with scaling.

One simple makeshift solution I could suggest is just to lower the initial cooldown on weaker abilities while leaving more powerful abilities as they are. For example, Futo and Alice currently have abilities that buff the effects for landing on Plus or Minus tiles, respectfully. But Alice’s ability has the same cooldown as Marisa’s “steal someone’s property from across the map” ability. Why? It is incredibly weak. Heck, if it had no cooldown at all I probably still wouldn’t use it very often since you can only use 1 card a turn. So you might as well make it available at the beginning of the match, right? It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a simple change to make.

Battles have a similar problem though. Anything that affects battles, or characters who might be balanced around having higher battle stats but weaker out of battle stats, is currently meaningless because battles are trivial. But if they weren’t trivial, then they’d be a slog that greatly interrupts the pacing of the board game with an incredibly long and in-depth minigame. And that’s a bad thing too. They’re trapped between a rock and hard place by their own competing design goals.

Characters who are balanced around their battle stats are especially stupid a the moment, by the way. A lot of characters are simply worse out of battle in every way.

As for dueling, I don’t think characters oriented towards dueling is inherently a bad idea, they just need to buff the effects of the other out-of-battle stats. Essentially they need to create a decisive rather than marginal advantage, that can make or break a turn. For example, if it was possible to stack enough Discount to buy something significant on turn one. Perhaps balance all maps (rather than some maps) around properties not being affordable with your starting cash, and make stacking Discount a strategy that would let you buy one. Same with earnings. Like, double or even triple the bonuses. I mean, why not? If you’re creating dueling beasts who get 3-4 more dice than everyone else, why not give us a shopping beast who gets half-off? Heck, even 100% off? That wouldn’t even be all that OP with the current game rules. Albeit I guess you’d need to prevent them from making a profit by buying talismans and reselling them immediately, that would be a little silly. The opportunity cost is that you’re not optimized to win duels, so your opponents can just steal your stuff that you got for free.

I guess CB not being especially relevant, even in “collect as much CB as possible” mode, is also a fundamental game design flaw. Although there’s sort of a dumb emergent strategy where you just farm CB in Delivery mode to get more rewards at the end, which is super tedious but also the most efficient way to get XP and materials.

Levels mattering is fine. Eventually everyone will be max level anyway, and leveling up is fun. It’d be a problem if levels meant nothing whatsoever. Maybe add some kind of level normalization to PvP, like in Pokemon.

Luck is... fine. I don’t feel like it’s a huge problem, because systems are in place designed to mitigate it. The Duel stat, for example, is designed to mitigate the effects of luck in duels. And I like that, fundamentally. Maps are also usually designed with there being tons of different paths of different lengths, so you aren’t too punished for your movement dice rolls. Usually. Not all maps are created equal, and there are certainly some I like more than others. Anyway, you can also mitigate luck by getting to a shop tile and buying movement talismans (mostly Nitori). It’s absolutely not just a “roll and hope I win” game, it’s a strategic game about making the most of the rolls you’re given.

[sinesalvatorem]

Shoot Your Shot

In biology, there’s a concept of r/K selection. Reproductively, an r-strategy involves an organism trying to produce as many offspring as possible, with low resource investment in each individual descendant. Meanwhile, a K-strategy involves producing few offspring which each receive a large fraction of the parent’s resources to ensure that descendant’s success.

This is of course a spectrum, and the greatest extremes are across biological kingdoms. For example, fungi reproduce via spore dispersal, which is the most extreme version of throwing individual cells into the wind and hoping that some of them live maybe. Meanwhile, while some animals are very r-selected, the most K-selected species in nature are generally animals (eg, whales).

Humans are among the most K-selected things out there. Because of our huge brains, we gestate for nine months. (Compare rats, which gestate for about three weeks, or mushrooms, which just tell individual cells to fuck off and probably die.) Plus, we invest years in raising our children until maturity - and then we delay natural maturity a couple more years to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on them going to college.

Of course, even among humans, there’s a spectrum. As with most species with two fixed sexes (reproductively speaking), males can get away with a more r-like strategy, because in theory they don’t have to invest a ton in offspring. However, with few exceptions, males can’t actually get away with too much of this, because that nine month gestation period puts a hard ceiling on how r-strategy females around them can afford to be. So instead we tend to do pair bonding and families and all the other shit mushrooms would be baffled by. (Except they can’t be, because they don’t have our big expensive brains.)

OK, so this post isn’t really about reproductive biology. It’s about human psychology. Specifically, the fact that the r/K split in how willing one is to engage in [high output | low investment] vs [low output | high investment] can be generalised across way more domains than making babies.

In the biological model, organisms generally lean toward r when the environment is very high-variance. In such a situation, the amount that you invest in individual offspring matters far less than luck (ie, environmental factor’s beyond the parent’s control). Like, fungi can’t really change the concentration of dead logs in the area - the best they can do is hope their spores fall on some.

Likewise, if you are engaged in any pursuit where how well a given attempt goes has more to do with unpredictable conditions than with your own level of investment, r strategies are better. Meanwhile, K is ideal for the reverse. The only problem is, for some reason (I would guess due to some mixture of culture and biology), most people are stuck on K.

Call this perfectionism. Call it fear of failure. Whatever it is, a lot of people are unwilling to act unless they’re confident that any individual attempt will succeed - even when they can make an unbounded number of attempts. They just seem unable to comprehend that failure is low cost - or they’ll come up with a bunch of justifications for why failure actually is high cost. “Oh, but people I’ve never seen before and will never see again might laugh at me!” Excuse me, but what? The fuck?

All my observations seem to indicate that very few people actually shift their strategy between the r and K poles based on the circumstances. r/K becomes a feature of them - not of the optimal environmental strategy. Case in point - women in general tend to be less willing to do things they might fail at, no matter how soft the landing. I see this all around me. My male and female acquaintances are, in general, about equally competent - but the men do while the women practice and practice and practice and are never good “““enough”””.

The reason the world isn’t run by perfectionists is because perfectionists won’t get out of bed. The reason the world is run by men is because (many) men will shoot their shot at anything. Do you think Donald Trump would have run for president if he was only willing to do things he thought he’d succeed at? Are you not going to run for office because you might lose? Well, congratulations - now you know why bullshit floats.

And almost everything is like this! The modern world is made of soft landings. Almost nothing truly hurts you these days. Embarrassment doesn’t mean getting thrown out of the tribe - it means you can just do the same damn thing tomorrow and it’ll probably work. If you think you’re not good enough, you are almost certainly wrong, because few things today have a “good enough” - it’s just whether this time the right person/company/algorithm was impressed. Why are they impressed some times and not others? Honestly, this hardly matters - just keep shooting out spores and eventually they’ll land on wood.

Most people won’t put their art online because they don’t think people will like it. So??? If they don’t then they... Won’t look at it. If they do, you’ve just got both fans and information on what kind of stuff those fans like. I don’t think I’m a particularly great writer - I’ve met tons of people slaving away in obscurity who are clearly better than me. But I wrote my way to America because I wrote where Americans could read it - while my obscure acquaintances don’t let their writing out far enough to get a response.

Likewise, when I go to a concert, I’m generally the first person on the dancefloor. It’s rare that anyone else will visibly move their body until I’ve proven that it’s “safe”. Safe from what - who fucking knows? In reality, nothing. That’s why I don’t hesitate to bust a move. In the minds of everyone else - death, I’m guessing. So, of course, they all dance less expressively than me, in the hopes that no one will notice them. Meanwhile, I’m not an especially skilled dancer - I’ve taken two dance classes in my life - but at the end of the night, all eyes are on me. Of course they are - there was no one else to look at.

It’s hard for me to overemphasise the degree to which every. thing. is. like. this. This particular psychological bug is one of the most frustrating things in the world to me, because sitting over here on this heap of utility it just feels so obvious. Yes, you should ask people out! Yes, you should apply to that job! Yes, you should submit that manuscript! Yes, you should post your sketches on Deviant Art! Yes, you should try antidepressants! Yes, you should stop curtailing your life and start winning! More than half the time, the main obstacle is an unwillingness to lose cheaply.

Any time you’re considering doing something, you should ask yourself what the minimum viable product is. What is the lowest effort version of the thing you want to do that might maybe work? And how easily can you just do that repeatedly until it works? If you haven’t Googled a list of a few dozen companies in your industry and spammed them with your portfolio, why not? Because one might reject you? There are billions of people in this world and millions of companies that have never heard of you. You are not going to run out of options if you’re willing to cast a wide net.

Of course, the psychological bug in question is extremely deep, so I know the vast majority of people reading this will just feel briefly uncomfortable with their life choices before moving on and continuing to shoot themselves in the foot. That’s fine. Luckily, thousands of people read this blog, so hopefully a couple of them will get shaken up enough that they’ll be willing to stop screwing themselves out of success. And a couple people living better lives is as much as I’m aiming for.

In the meantime, I’m going to walk through some business districts in SF today and hand out my resume. Feel free to wish me luck, but I shouldn’t need it. Whether I succeed is just a matter of how much paper I can print on.

[edh-a-to-z]

Battlebond - Blue

Onto Blue!

Arcane Artisan

Grade: C-

Home: Clone.dec, Fatties

Range: Narrow

The fact that the tokens persist until end of turn is really nice,

It’s slow as molasses, but hey, turn 4 Eldrazi titan makes anything worth it. Keep Counterspells and hexproof options to protect it

Fumble

Whoops, you dropped all your Sword of X and Y

Grade: C+

Home: Anti-Voltron, Thief deck

Range: Very Narrow

Sweet, stealing stuff!

Unless your opponent’s creature is hexproof/shroud/prot from blue (but you should use Arcane Lighthouse)

Game Plan

Grade: C+

Home: Most any Blue Deck

Range: Wide

I have a soft spot for shuffle and draw 7 spells. It’s a nice refuel, messes with some combos. And here, the option split the bill is nice, optimally for anywhere from U to 5U.

Not spectacular or shiney, but a potential workhorse.

Out of Bounds

Grade: C

Home: Meta- Available reasons for usage, and Politics in games

Range: Average?

The combo player is going off.

Or the Fatty Player is getting domed with a X=10000 Fireball.

All you have up is U. Good thing the other players wanna still be in the game and will ante up 3 mana.

Assist is interesting, and a flat counter is nice. Might see some play in a Commander pre-con with Political plans.

Spellseeker

Grade: A

Home: Spellslingers, Flicker/Blink decks, Really anywhere with a viable pool of pulls

Range: Very Wide

Tutors are traditionally super-useful, and mercifully WOTC printed this at rare.

checks price AND it’s already 11 bucks.

Hope y’all get lucky and snap one in boxes/draft.

Zndrsplt’s Judgement

Grade: D-

Home: Politics deck?

Range: Narrow

Aww look, the little homonculus is hanging out on the ogre’s horn spot.

Voltron decks that have one creature out will take a hit from the Foe option (that’s why I love pact effects. always pack an Innocent Blood). The tokens are a bit limited, cuz each player only gets to copy what they already have, so it’s not true cloning.

Overall feels underwhelming in EDH. Too swingy, and the punishment side doesn’t feel punishing enough. 

Lore Weaver

Grade: D

Home: Ramp Decks, Decks that play on opponents turns

Range: Narrow

I was really conflicted about this one. 

Partner is now an even more interesting deckbuilding mechanic. With the auto-tutoring for another card, this card is more valuable than at first glance.

A 7 mana draw two is almost useless, aside from late game Limited and of course EDH. Plus, the mana generated from Ley Weaver can ramp you into draw! Elegant synergy.

On the other hand, it’s a 4 mana, draw then do nothing with a possibly useless ability, and only modestly useful tribal tags.

Mystic Confluence

Grade: A-

Home: Any blue deck

Range: Wide

The Confluence cycle of C15 is phenomenal. This blue one was the most expensive of the group (until the Battlebond version was launched and the price dropped). 

Three relevant modes that can work in many a situation, and Instant speed works great. Making a spell cost 3, 6, or 9 more will usually knock things out, creature return is always useful, and Draw a card can pad things out. It also makes a great card to play in a “copy the spell” situation (looking at you Will Kenrith’s Ult).

Peregrin Drake

Grade: C

Home: Combo decks, Blink/Flicker Decks

Range: Narrow

In the decks it combos off in, it’s a necessity. Otherwise it’s an expensive toy. 

Not anything to be said that hasn’t been said.

Sower of Temptation

Grade: B

Home: Blink Deck, Faerie Tribal, Most Blue Decks

Range: Average

I love stealing as much as the next player, and Sower is one of the best. A body with a pair of relevant creature types is nice, and Mind Control for 1 less is sweet.

Extra shenanigans with a sac engine to make sure your opponent doesn’t get their creature back or blink makes it even better.

Tidespout Tyrant

Grade: D-

Home: Old School control decks

Range: Narrow

Ah, Ravnica. Mid 2000s had tons of Rare creatures that cost a bunch, have decent P/T, and some sweet effects. 

The setup for this is exorbitant and the effect is impressive, but I’m of the opinion that fatties need to have an effect that turn like an ETB effect, or some way of not dying to get value. Tidespout isn’t particularly overlarge for EDH, and you’d need 8 mana an cheerios or 9 mana and 1 drop spells, or mana shenaigans, which is annoying to set up

True Name Nemesis

Grade: C+

Home: Merfolk Tribal, Being “that person”

Range: Narrow

You know it, you hate it, you’ve expended several Wrath of Gods to take it out.

A tough customer, especially when Aura’d up with Infect or other nasty abilities, this little sucker has wreaked havoc in other formats, but is a little less nasty for multiplayer.

Also a great card to sell for other EDH cards, so money grab it if you can!

So

[badwitchgame]

Pen per concept

I found a concept art of a pen / shed on imgur and I thought it would be a good practice to make it in Blender. It didn’t go as planned I’m quite rusty when it comes to making stuff.

https://imgur.com/gallery/cH6y3UV

 concept made by  Roslagen796 on imgur

I first created a blockout, but then accidentally deleted most of it with no hope of restoring. But luckily I had most of what I’ll need, 4 beams (probably could have got away with 3), mushroom, rope, hay bed, metal chains and rings, barrel and bowl, and finally ivy vines, grass and flowers too.. Quite average for a scene, and to be honest there was nothing extraordinary in it, just beams, some small props and foliage.  I started making the beams, low poly, high poly, baked PBR maps in Substance Painter. Then the rest, most came out well, but now that I think back at it I noticed errors.. I left the house in beams instead of making 1 model. Some models I made for blender so the textures were generated, so I was not able to properly present them at the end, like the awning. 

I’m getting pretty good at making a fading to black on grass, so I leave it here as a tutorial:

The point is that I have a green color and a darker green color, and I’m mixing the 2 and the factor of how I mix them is based on a linear gradient texture. the texture by default goes horizontally, I added a mapping and texture coordinate nodes and changed rotation. Changing the rotation itself is not enough, that’s why I pushed it up a bit on the original X axis. The only problem with this is that the mesh is bad (for gaming). I used individual blades rotated randomly so it had 536 verts, 204 faces and 448 tris.  For grass, this is insanely high. My initial population of grass around the building resulted in a 5million tris cost for the grass alone. It looked OK though:

There was additional issue with this, the ivy, which for some reason was ~2million tris on the above picture. My Blender crashed frequently, and my space was gone So I had to re-make the grass and the ivy. The grass I managed to reduce to 200 planes, 123 verts, 110 faces, by making a semi-low poly blade composition, then baking it on to a simple square plane and then cutting out the grass in blender. I tried to add add some variety by breaking up the shape and bending it a bit that’s why it had so many verts.. 

this looks much uglier, and not much better performance-wise either, so I still need to work a bit more on my grass.  The ivy was easier, but I had to do that twice again as well.. The first leaf I made was 2million polygons, that I managed to decimate to 40k without any major detail loss, then I arranged the leaves to a vine and tried to make a bigger  arrangement before baking but it did not work, even with a single vine, the poly count was ~10 mil, and when I tried to make an arrangement from that, my Blender crashed multiple times, my free disk space for cache was full etc.. so I ended up making 1 vine only, and I baked that down to a simple plane that was not looking that bad. The overall polycount for the whole scene was 120k verts, 91k faces, 183k tris, and this was the last render in blender with the “optimized” assets:

Technically it’s different, but I don’t really like the overall scene. it’s boring, and I didn’t do it very quickly. Basically it took 3 days more or less.. The whole weekend and Monday too, although admittedly I watched a ton of Netflix as well..  Sketchfab link: https://skfb.ly/otxMZ

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