#It's completely unintuitive to me

[biollsprite]

Played TES arena for like 5hrs today... Effervescent

[mumblesplash]

comics as an art form make me insane. they’re so difficult to do well. there’s so many different ways to make sequential art work and most of them are deeply unintuitive. onomatopoeia that feels completely ridiculous to put down often reads seamlessly. panels on a page become a fractally nested image composition challenge that’s only possible to lose because if you do a good job no one will notice. you have to direct the readers’ eyes on a specific path across the page but also account for the fact that they won’t follow it. comic time isn’t linear. if the order of events isn’t crystal clear the story becomes incomprehensible. sometimes you need to do this on purpose. all this for a medium almost universally considered less effective than animation and less respectable than plain text. even its own name doesn’t take it seriously

[snowflop]

[batbetbitbotbut]

Finishing off the fine thread warp with a small and messy sample (not fixing the various loops and inconsistencies, or the missing warp thread which I only just noticed right down the centre of the first photo)!

This structure is "shadow weave" which is normally woven as a colour effect with 2+ colours, as seen in the draft (source: The Enigma of Shadow Weave Illuminated by Rebecca Winter). Woven in just one colour, you have large sections of "plain weave" (the most basic over-under-over-under cloth) with tiny points/lines of texture where the colourful stripes would switch direction. The third photo is the view up from underneath the loom - if the warp threads were set further apart, then the whole thing would look kind of lacey, but I set them too close for that.

I very much don't feel like I understand shadow weave, it's a mystery and completely unintuitive to me, but that's why we try things out! I think this was a poor choice of pattern for a single-colour shadow weave - I don't like how the straight lines of texture show up and I think the whole thing just looks blobby and ill-defined. I plan to make a full sized scarf or shawl with this technique so I will choose a bolder pattern with lots of diagonals. That is also why we try things out!

To make this little sample: normally I don't cut and tie the warp onto the rear apron rod, I just loop it around the rod. So after cutting off my previous finished scarf with a bit too much warp left to want to throw away but too little to do anything with, I took out the apron rod, unfolded the warp, and tied it on to make another warp twice as long and half as wide.

This cloth will probably end up donated to @lottiefairchildbranwell for yet more notebook covers, if fae wants it. I keep promising you things and haven't got around to posting any of them! Sorry!

[rowlight]

so is nobody else aware that L and Light's names are technical opposites of one another?

first thing to clarify is Light's name. without too much deliberation, Japan has this phenomenon (to my western understanding) wherein certain parents will name their children after English words. (this could potentially include other western languages; i am unsure.) as japanese is a syllabary, most of the time, these words cannot actually be pronounced properly in japanese. these names are often also written with presumably completely unrelated characters. light's name is one of these, having to be pronounced as "raito" in japanese, and written (as he so kindly explains to naomi) with "tsuki," the character for "moon." these names are called "kira-kira names." i am not joking.

last thing we need to do is look at the translation for "Yagami," which approximates (to my knowledge!) as meaning "high," as in "high in power.”

so, if we take an extrapolation of this, and replace light's names with their written functions—his forename as being a kira-kira name and being written as moon, and his surname (depending on how it's written) meaning "high"—we can evaluate an interpretation of light's name as being, extensively, "kira-kira moon high." now, let's look at L's name, which is far more self-explanatory. his name is L Lawliet (in case you are somehow on the death note tags and were not already aware), which is pronounced "L low-light." (which, as s a side note, is a hilariously unintuitive pronunciation for his name, implying that Light (if he ever heard it) would almost certainly misspell it (made even more likely as a native japanese speaker, even given how good his english is) and potentially make him immune to a human using the death note by misspelling it six times.)

so, if we put the *phonetic* pronunciation of L's name next to the *written* extrapolation of light's, and reduce light's name to its logical conclusion, we get "L low light" and "Kira moon high." (hyphon in L's name and hyphon + second 'kira' in light's removed, as light himself is not both kiras, and removing the second kira also removes the hyphon in his name, whereafter we then logically can remove the hyphon in l's name. like homoerotic algebra.)

furthering the analogy, and allowing a little leniency (given all the other obvious similarities) that "light" can be taken as the opposite to "moon"—as in, "sunlight," and furthermore, "sun"—we output "L low sun" and "Kira moon high."

if you interpret L as the sun and Light as the moon, then congrats, it's already spelled out for you. if you interpret L as the moon and light as the sun, then it's like they carry the symbolic celestial analogies of one another in the other's name, which is some crazy soulmate shit. if you're like me, and interpret them as being both but in different ways, then both ways are true simultaneously. (to me, it speaks to how similar they ultimately are that you can interpret them as being both the sun and moon, albeit in different fashions.)

either way, they have gay ass little names and i can't believe i've never heard anybody talk about this before.

[creepyclothdoll]

Everything Is Fine (comic): Everything we know about the New Government (SPOILERS)

I just finished season three. I need to talk to someone about it.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

Up until the end of Season 3, I (like many) suspected Red Status was some sort of illusion, recording, deepfake, etc. That's still not off the table, but Season 3 gives us a lot of evidence that Red Status is real, that the children are genuinely being held on rooftop camps, and that at least some of them are genuinely brainwashed in favor of the New Government.

Since the start, I've felt that the New Government was probably aliens or rogue AI or some other sci-fi non-human entity, because it seems like no human being would have anything to gain at all from doing any of the stuff the New Government is doing. I'm sticking with this theory, that it's non-human, because of how organized yet indecipherable its actions seem to be.

So what do we know about this group or entity? I'm making a list. I haven't read the previous seasons since they came out, so I'll definitely miss details-- please feel free to add or correct me!

...

RESOURCES

It has vast resources. It is able to produce cat heads for every single person in these communities-- possibly for the entire world, and distribute them. It is able to produce and maintain inconceivably vast quantities of surveillance equipment. It is probable that it has built all of the dystopian cookie-cutter suburban homes shown in season one, but that could just be the actual suburbs, idk.

It was able to "source replacements" for all utilities immediately upon taking over, an improbable feat.

The takeover interfered with the communications of the International Space Station.

It was somehow able to gather and communicate with all children in either full secret or possibly instantaneously, leading the children to "join their cause" at the start of the takeover. Children were either very quickly or very secretly brainwashed and radicalized enough that some were willing to taunt and berate their own parents as they committed suicide at the command of the New Government.

It is able to somehow monitor every single person and sense when they are doing something "wrong." In the first season, this monitor's activity is depicted through red eye cameras, and it seems VERY nit-picky about people dropping the happy facade even slightly. HOWEVER, this monitoring seems like it can easily be tricked by people using cheeky turn-of-phrase and code (such as Judy asking Maggie how many square feet her 'turkey' has). It also doesn't seem to notice or care when someone suddenly goes off-line (entering a faraday cage). Its most effective monitors are human beings, however, as it highly incentivizes people to turn each other in.

...

THEMES IN BEHAVIOR

It has a sense of order which is completely unintuitive to human beings (groceries and products organized alphabetically, streets and businesses named by number, 'Art factory').

It encourages betrayal and persecution. It does not care whether anyone punished is legitimately guilty of anything-- the purpose seems to be to continue to make people inflict punishment on each other as much as possible.

It enables and encourages cruelty of individuals' own free will. The mayor of Lakeview must move one couple "up" each month, but there is no limit to the number they can red status. The mayor has extreme limitations on their power when it comes to helping people, but unlimited power when it comes to hurting them, which encourages abuse while also leaving the actual choice to abuse power up to free will.

It exterminates huge swaths of the population at a time. It seems like MOST people are probably killed under this regime.

It has an ultimate goal. The current status quo is not its end game. It created the numbered neighborhood society and then it destroyed it after about three years, allowing only a select few who "played the game" right (betrayed their neighbors) to escape.

It changes the rules from phase to phase, seemingly encouraging "cheating" in the second part of its game by providing everyone in Lakeview with an apparently unsurveilled boat. This could be ineptitude on its part, but it seems like a huge oversight for an otherwise over-the-top hyper-surveilling entity.

It is committed to control over aesthetic. It takes full responsibility of a mass-production strategy to feeding the population. Food is mostly canned, there are no brands, and the quality seems poor and inauthentic. Where are these resources coming from? Who is generating all this food, and where?

It is committed to aesthetic over functionality. (Charlie worked at the box factory, Sam worked in moving the boxes around, while Bob worked at the box incinerator, implying there is no value or purpose to many peoples' jobs other than busywork). They designated Ormel red status because the mask he was assigned was a misprint.

It needs human beings to enforce its will. An empowered individual must make the choice to "red status" someone else. It seems to overwhelmingly rely on citizens to use the tools it provides to enforce its rules and maintain its order. Is this an actual need, or a choice it makes? Would it be able to "red status" or possibly kill everyone if all of its enforcement officers refused to push the button?

...

HISTORY & METHODS OF REIGN

The military was likely targeted first, as the army was already executing people in the streets the same day the overthrow was announced.

The cat heads seem to be made of a combination of current human technology and sci-fi wildness, containing both cameras, tracking devices, and strange green ooze that can "heal."

The smiley sticker system was not invented by the New Government. The manipulative facade of a system where you can supposedly "buy" a merit with an unattainable amount of money was invented by Lakeview, as was the voting system. A large amount of the sinister system of Lakeview was created by Mayor Laura and the town council based on assumptions they made from reading between the lines. We don't know if this is what they New Government WANTS, but we definitely know it's ALLOWED.

They declared another lakeview-like town a "failed project" and redded everyone, possibly due to corruption and fighting in the town.

It often communicates through implication. When the New Government took over, it "implied" responsibility to the press.

It claims Lakewood's job is to determine who is "truly loyal." Lakewood must send one couple "up" and at least one "down" each month. It was up to the mayor of Lakewood to interpret what this meant, and she interpreted it as snuffing out rebellious activity.

It mandates the hunts in Lakewood. The practice of rewarding those who hunt down and kill red status people is a direct edict from the New Government.

Whatever happens to the children who do survive is bad enough that most of them are deeply psychologically scarred.

We may assume that the red-status children actually did jump, as we have more evidence for that now than we did before. We have seen what is implied to be dried blood from the splatter, but no bodies. It is implied that the bodies were removed with a vehicle. At the camp we have seen, it looks like of the six children camping there (estimated from the number of cots shown), four died.

...

ASSUMPTIONS & GUESSES

We have no proof or evidence that any real human beings are running the New Government. The highest-up official we have seen was described as just another victim herself.

Maggie said "This world takes people... and turns them into monsters." I suspect that is at least part of the goal of the New Government.

Winston's daughter Lucy said, as she was about to kill herself, that they were doing what they were told "so the people who deserve this world get to live in it." That seems like it must be very close to what the New Government is telling them.

Hillside is not the end of the "game." It is strongly implied that Hillside residents are still locked in some sort of betrayal-based "loyalty" test.

So what do you think? What is the nature of or purpose of "The New Government?" And how do you think Oscar fits in?

[jomiddlemarch]

the last man in the world

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a sole proprietorship coffee shop in possession of an ideal location and a reliable source of ethically harvested beans must be in want of adequate staff.

Elizabeth would have taken one measly part-time barista who could create a competent Rosetta in a latte.

Or someone who was not related to her, because when her sisters came to “help out,” she ended up short cash in the till (Lydia and shockingly Mary), running low on clotted cream (Kit), or with the entire kitchen scrubbed clean but with all the shelves rearranged in a way that was completely unintuitive unless you were also deeply influenced by feng shui (Jane, who needed to stop worrying so much about cultural appropriation but also needed to stop moving the espresso cups to the north side of the room.)

It was getting dire and that was not only Elizabeth’s opinion. Charlotte, her closest friend from uni and also her accountant, had started to have an expression halfway between concerned and skeptical when Elizabeth talked about the coffee-shop and had absolutely vetoed the vintage La Marzocco espresso maker.

“You’d need what they call an angel investor in the States to pull that off, Lizzie, and nothing about Bluestockings would attract an angel,” Charlotte said.

“You still think I should have accepted the offer from Collins,” Elizabeth replied.

“I’m not idealistic,” Charlotte shrugged. “Not a romantic like you. He made a solid offer and he had the cash—”

“He looked like a toad in a Fair Isle jumper and he kept calling me Bettina,” Elizabeth said.

“This is London, the costs are only getting higher, between the bloody Tories and the foreign nationals buying up entire streets— You may regret saying no."

“I’d rather that than the alternative,” Elizabeth said. “The look on his face was priceless.”

“Oh, there was a price,” Charlotte said. “You just don’t know how much it’ll cost you.”

“How much?” the tall, dark-haired man in what was very clearly Savile Row asked, after Elizabeth, most definitely not looking her best since not one sister had shown up to help, not even Jane, had pushed across a sloppily poured London fog latte and then had forgotten to ring him up.

“Four quid,” she said, rounding up. He was wearing monogrammed platinum cufflinks and had the attitude of someone with a vast estate he referred to as “the country house.” Plus, he’d ignored her the whole time she’d scrambled around to make the drink, even when she nearly knocked three tins (Jane, why, why?!) from the shelf where the Earl Grey was kept and she’d yelped most unbecomingly.

“I meant how much do you need for the back-taxes and the rent. It needs a renovation, but we’d need to get an architect in for that, Annika de Bourgh at Rosings is the best,” he said. “My friend Charlie was here last week, raved about it, said the very pretty barista with the bluest eyes told him you were her sister, the coffee-shop about to go under, even though she’d reorganized the cutlery five times to invite financial well-being, and he’s likely to do something very ill-considered unless I stop him, so how much do you need? The place is tolerable, I suppose—”

“Tolerable?” Elizabeth repeated. Sputtered, not unlike the milk frother which needed a repair.

“I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen better. It has some potential, the location is unimpeachable, the foot traffic alone should make the rent, as long as people want to walk in,” he said. “How much?”

“You’ve some nerve,” Elizabeth said.

“Yes. As well as the acumen and portfolio to back it up,” he answered coolly.

“I’d never take money from someone whose name I don’t know, who hasn’t worked with me a single day,” Elizabeth said.

“Darcy. Will Darcy. I hope you’ve a spare apron,” he said.

“I don’t,” she said.

“Then I’ll wear one of your tee-shirts,” he said, taking off his suit jacket and folding it over one forearm. 

“It won’t fit,” she said.

“I’ll be careful then, not to spill,” he replied.

The tee-shirt fit, if by fit one meant that it made it clear how exquisitely well-built Will Darcy was, broad and well-muscled through the shoulders and chest, narrow waisted, the pale blue cotton concealing hardly anything, the swoopy swirly scrawl of Bluestockings seemingly designed specifically to make one consider whether he possessed a six or eight pack. And he didn’t spill a drop.

“Convinced?” he asked, after three hours, the best mid-afternoon rush she’d ever had neatly managed, the counters pristine. He’d rolled his sleeves up after the first hour and Elizabeth had resolutely determined not to give a name to the feeling the sight evoked in her. 

(The name would probably include an obscenity, something she could confide to neither Jane nor Charlotte.)

“Give me a week,” she said.

“To decide?”

“Work here for a week. One afternoon doesn’t count. You might be lucky,” she said.

“I don’t believe in luck,” he said.

“Of course not,” she said. 

Charlotte had been right. Elizabeth had had no idea what it would cost her.

Written but posted late (on a day when I feel like a lot of us can use a cheerful distraction!) for Janeuary 2025 @janeuary-month, Day 15, prompt: London.

[etirabys]

the relief of giving up on 81k's fancy instant pot I'm too stupid to use and buying a $26 rice cooker with one button rivals that of going for a cigarette after a grueling 3h CS exam in college

I was unnecessarily dramatic about this decision because I'd imbued my ability to use this instant pot with a moral dimension & my failure felt like a rout in the cosmic battle of good and evil. last week I said "I want a dumb rice cooker again", angrily, 15% of the way to tears

81k goes, "you can do what you want", looking confused by the intensity of my self hatred

I used to think "I hate this object but I will simply conquer it with my mind". but the whole lid needed to be disassembled for cleaning each time, the plastic bit you toggle to vent steam felt weirdly flimsy and gave me a sense of unease about the machine as a whole given the pressures, the button sequence to do something as simple as "cook rice" was unintuitive, and you know what? the buttons didn't fucking feel good to push!

they were barely protuberant plastic shells with no aural or tactile feedback when pushed. You don't know if you entered a sequence that's going to do anything until you successfully complete such a sequence, and then it deigns to beep at you I was going nuts trying to establish a bond with this thing

[patrickbaeddman]

re-opening a lot of old wounds lately---or, finding they were still open

i think one of the most traumatizing phenomenon for me is that of 'sex advice,' as in, 'how to please a woman,' 'how to make her come,' et cetera. i couldn't help but be exposed to this shit as a kid, it's rampant in feminist & 'queer' online circles. the assumption is that if you have a dick, and your lover has a cunt, sex will be enjoyable for you no matter what, and especially, what naturally feels most enjoyable for you feels BAD for your lover, and you need to do something unintuitive/something that PROBABLY will feel bad to YOU to please them, because your bodies are so diametrically opposed. people love this shit! it seems to really appeal to cis women, the idea that they are maligned on a biological level and special care needs to be taken in reparation. and 'feminist' men also seem to revel in how they are so altruistic that they ignore their bodily urges and leverage their body as a tool for the other's pleasure. this can't be called sex! the obsession with obligations, mechanical techniques, achieving specific ends in specific ways... sex should be the opposite of that...

even though i know (now) that it's just completely wrong, and i fucking hate it, these ideas have really got under my skin and affected my sexuality, i think. my favorite is sticking it in girl's cunts, and penetrative sex in general. and i've always felt that way. so it was easy to read this sort of thing as applying to myself, and i felt so sad and guilty for even liking piv at all, since the impression i got was that everyone with a cunt hates it (and heaven knows why they ever participate) unless you go out of your way to 'last longer,' stimulate this or that special place, use this or that special technique, mostly with your hands; your dick doesn't bring anyone pleasure. there is NO WAY for someone to come from just piv, well, besides the top, of course. i'm really into cis women, i think they're really hot. but i always have this guilt when fucking them, this must be much more enjoyable for me than it is for them. i feel like i have to sideline my own desires, i have to make them come before i do, as many times as possible, otherwise i'll be just like all those terrible men that just USE women's bodies for their OWN pleasure. ironically this has resulted in my body being used for pleasure in ways that were not fun for me many times! woman moment.

one of the things i love most about sex is how desires align, how what you want to do is often exactly what your lover wants to do, how you can be totally selfish, focus completely on your own desire, and your lover can do the same, and magically you end up pleasuring each other also. the magic is that if you want to fuck, there's lots of people that WANT to get fucked. they selfishly want for themselves the thing that for you is your own selfish desire. there's no need for altruism or special care at all. i like that one can be totally careless during sex, let go, lose control. that is to say, after having sex with lots of people, it's impossible not to notice that anyone can come from piv, and it's clearly most often really enjoyable for both parties, at least in my experience. actually in my experience it's usually more enjoyable for the bottom but that's my fault because of my aforementioned fear! but yeah, like, just BEING penetrated feels good, usually. which is what i always hoped/how i always imagined it.

this shit is so insidiously transmisogynistic in its core essence---it's deeply violent towards cock, positioning it as inherently powerful, oppressive, destructive, and also towards women, like, it's obviously horrible for women that have dicks, but, i feel like the ideas peddled here are horrible for cis women too. oh your body is inherently harder to please, it's harder for you to come, other people have to take special considerations for you otherwise you'll always be dissatisfied with sex. i feel like reading this stuff as a cis woman would make me really sad also. i'd think, i want to be with a partner whose own selfish desire is also for me my own selfish desire, not someone whose desire doesn't move me naturally but who has to modify it, to go out of their way to 'please' me. that doesn't please me. i hope this advice is wrong because i want to have sex with someone where we just naturally make each other feel good and it's fun and not a chore for anyone... but no i don't know how cis people stand this. it's so literally violent to separate people's bodies into mechanically different categories like this. virulent transmisogyny, virulent essentialism. but it's deeply affected me.

like, i most often end up playing the role of a service top during sex, even though i don't like that and have never wanted that, i just slip into that role. i wanna be a selflish exploitative top that just uses women's bodies for my own pleasure, that seems really awesome. i mean, i feel like that's a really admirable quality of cis men, that they pursue their own desires so readily and without shame(i mean, many of them seem to. i don't have much hands-on experience). if i was a straight cis woman i would surely think that was cool! but yes, i always think, oh, if i come now she would be annoyed, if i don't touch her enough with my hands before i stick it in i won't have 'earned it,' and so on. that's so dumb! why is it so hard for me to escape this pattern of thinking? regardless of the fact that there are plenty of people that think like this, i want to have sex the way i want to, and let others get mad at me retardedly if that's what they're gonna do. but i'm too afraid, most of the time. clearly this is a deep wound, i usually can overcome things like this with sheer willpower.

i've been thinking a lot about my sexuality, what i really desire, what i really care about, what i'm afraid of, how to have the kind of sex that i want to, where to go, who to know

i can't think of what to do exactly. i sort of fail to imagine the possiblity of something better, it seems. which is lame... i should at least be able to imagine it. i've been confronting a lot of failure of imagination, or in other words, fear, lately. it's hard. and embarrassing. i've conquered a lot of fears, and i've just never been afraid of most of the things most people are. i think of myself as really strong. but i have not survived unscathed. who could?

[morlock-holmes]

What objections would you actually accept to AI?

Roughly in order of urgency, at least in my opinion:

Problem 1: Curation

The large tech monopolies have essentially abandoned curation and are raking in the dough by monetizing the process of showing you crap you don't want.

The YouTube content farm; the Steam asset flip; SEO spam; drop-shipped crap on Etsy and Amazon.

AI makes these pernicious, user hostile practices even easier.

Problem 2: Economic disruption

This has a bunch of aspects, but key to me is that *all* automation threatens people who have built a living on doing work. If previously difficult, high skill work suddenly becomes low skill, this is economically threatening to the high skill workers. Key to me is that this is true of *all* work, independent of whether the work is drudgery or deeply fulfilling. Go automate an Amazon fulfillment center and the employees will not be thanking you.

There's also just the general threat of existing relationships not accounting for AI, in terms of, like, residuals or whatever.

Problem 3: Opacity

Basically all these AI products are extremely opaque. The companies building them are not at all transparent about the source of their data, how it is used, or how their tools work. Because they view the tools as things they own whose outputs reflect on their company, they mess with the outputs in order to attempt to ensure that the outputs don't reflect badly on their company.

These processes are opaque and not communicated clearly or accurately to end users; in fact, because AI text tools hallucinate, they will happily give you *fake* error messages if you ask why they returned an error.

There's been allegations that Mid journey and Open AI don't comply with European data protection laws, as well.

There is something that does bother me, too, about the use of big data as a profit center. I don't think it's a copyright or theft issue, but it is a fact that these companies are using public data to make a lot of money while being extremely closed off about how exactly they do that. I'm not a huge fan of the closed source model for this stuff when it is so heavily dependent on public data.

Problem 4: Environmental maybe? Related to problem 3, it's just not too clear what kind of impact all this AI stuff is having in terms of power costs. Honestly it all kind of does something, so I'm not hugely concerned, but I do kind of privately think that in the not too distant future a lot of these companies will stop spending money on enormous server farms just so that internet randos can try to get Chat-GPT to write porn.

Problem 5: They kind of don't work

Text programs frequently make stuff up. Actually, a friend pointed out to me that, in pulp scifi, robots will often say something like, "There is an 80% chance the guards will spot you!"

If you point one of those AI assistants at something, and ask them what it is, a lot of times they just confidently say the wrong thing. This same friend pointed out that, under the hood, the image recognition software is working with probabilities. But I saw lots of videos of the Rabbit AI assistant thing confidently being completely wrong about what it was looking at.

Chat-GPT hallucinates. Image generators are unable to consistently produce the same character and it's actually pretty difficult and unintuitive to produce a specific image, rather than a generic one.

This may be fixed in the near future or it might not, I have no idea.

Problem 6: Kinetic sameness.

One of the subtle changes of the last century is that more and more of what we do in life is look at a screen, while either sitting or standing, and making a series of small hand gestures. The process of writing, of producing an image, of getting from place to place are converging on a single physical act. As Marshall Macluhan pointed out, driving a car is very similar to watching TV, and making a movie is now very similar, as a set of physical movements, to watching one.

There is something vaguely unsatisfying about this.

Related, perhaps only in the sense of being extremely vague, is a sense that we may soon be mediating all, or at least many, of our conversations through AI tools. Have it punch up that email when you're too tired to write clearly. There is something I find disturbing about the idea of communication being constantly edited and punched up by a series of unrelated middlemen, *especially* in the current climate, where said middlemen are large impersonal monopolies who are dedicated to opaque, user hostile practices.

Given all of the above, it is baffling and sometimes infuriating to me that the two most popular arguments against AI boil down to "Transformative works are theft and we need to restrict fair use even more!" and "It's bad to use technology to make art, technology is only for boring things!"

[vergi1ius]

Elrond: "Well, I hope those dwarves are successful on their quest. They seem a little amateur, but Gandalf wouldn't be helping them if he wasn't sure of their success."

Elf: "Er, sir, about those swords they had...."

Elrond: "Yes?"

Elf: "Well, I noticed that you gave them a very... simple explanation of their function. Nothing about how those swords also warn about the number and direction of any nearby goblins, as well as --"

Elrond: "Do you want to explain all that to them?"

Elf: "Me? Explain? The basic functions?"

Elrond: *sighs* "Look, even if Gondolin craftsmanship wasn't so caught up in its own traditions so as to be completely unintuitive to anyone not from that city, it's not like anyone among them save for Gandalf have even the most basic knowledge of our smith-craft so as to understand the swords' UI, much less how to manipulate it. No, I gave them the most succinct explanation of the utilities; it's not like a better explanation would increase their chances of success."

[pseudophan]

i just found out ur using indesign to make the phookbook and honestly im praying for u. i had to use indesign back in college and it nearly killed me off because its SO unintuitive?? its genuinely the worst adobe product ever i think. good luck to u and remember that one hour of suffering with indesign is one hour closer to closing the program

i'm ngl it's gone pretty well! i agree it's less intuitive than other adobe products i've used, at least certain features like WHY is the eyedrop tool so fucking convoluted. i assume the answer is to work better with the admittedly very useful swatches system but god fucking damnit that specific thing is driving me nutssss. that being said, a mix of the one tutorial i watched at the beginning of this journey and experience with other adobe software has made it fairly easy, i'm like a pro now. if all a pro needed was extremely fundamental skills and a complete disregard for layout rules. yes i will use five different fonts on a page no you can't stop me

thank fuck it's gone as well as it has though because i really did start this project like "i'm gonna use indesign to make it, haven't used it in my life except for one brief school project in 2016 that i now remember fuck all from, i've just decided i'm gonna learn it somehow" and i did! yay :3

[aotopmha]

All of the takes from the higher end FFXIV players I've seen recently feel so out of touch/narrow-minded to me.

I see people complaining about healers when I ran the most recent dungeon as one just the other day and we wiped several times.

I already saw someone complain that the FFXI raid is "easier than Aglaia" when every single run I've had has taken a significant amount of timer and at least a one or two wipes on a boss or two (or more).

Compared to all of the other Alliance Raids, I actually feel like the challenge here is to learn faster play, rather than to avoid wiping. It's the first time I've seen an Alliance Raid reach the end tail of the timer.

Granted, this is the first time I've done anything "on content" (and I've only seen footage of older day one runs, so maybe previous first day runs of Alliance Raids were similarly difficult), but to me, all of this stuff at the very least feels so much more unique and substantial than a lot of the encounters in a bunch of the previous expansions; this feels really cool and unique in its own right.

Prishe's proximity attacks, the group fight with the Archangels (which has a pretty cool use of interrupts), and Shadowlord's twists on various AoE attacks themselves are really cool.

And to me difficulty isn't the only value of an encounter.

They just don't seem to understand that not everyone consumes the game the same way they do, don't seem to have the ability to put themselves in others' shoes nor have the ability to understand that only a small portion of players play at their level.

I don't play healer often and I felt challenged by the recent dungeon.

I felt this whenever I saw some complain about Endwalker encounters, as well, but there I got it better because I could understand the complaint about how formulaic some of the encounters felt.

All Dawntrail encounters have felt unique and, most of all, substantial, to me.

And that was my personal gripe with particularly Endwalker's patch content. Many of the bosses did not have mechanics which evolved and/or had quite slow-paced useage/distribution of mechanics.

I suppose a game has the responsibility to entertain players on all levels of play, but this time around I understand the complaints much less as I see a lot of truly inventive encounter design that brings in ideas the game hasn't used much before.

And even after I stepped into harder content (extremes), the normal content never automatically became a bore to me; just different type of content.

In the end, I suppose I just disagree with people's consumption philosophy, then.

I think the game doesn't need to be "hard", just "substantial", so I suppose it's a very specific difference of opinion, which simply clashes with this different perspective and doesn't gel with the reality within the game I've seen.

I hope those who are unhappy will get something that makes them happy, but I also struggle a bit to see what the encounter designers could do to please this perspective.

Just copy Ivalice step by step? Just complete bullshit with bad telegraphing? Because that's where I felt like a bunch of Ivalice's challenge came from. It was challenging because some of the telegraphing could take a bit to parse and at points only made sense if you paid attention to every little tiny detail. It was challenging because it was pretty unintuitive and while I enjoyed it a lot and the bullshit is "funny", it's not "fun".

Math isn't bad because of the math, it's bad because you have to figure out how it works first. It can tell you "vitals", but the first time you do this, you don't necessarily automatically make all of the connections in the short time the fight gives you. And I personally think this is an issue of conveyance/bad design.

How are you supposed to figure out you need to let the sniper shoot you rather than use to shield to shield yourself in the moment? Where is the logic in that?

Even the magnet stuff is actually good.

Good conveyance is vague, but still solvable in the moment, like Prishe's wind-up punches.

But as said, I suppose I consume video games differently than most FFXIV/MMO players because in my mostly single-player gaming experience bad conveyence/design isn't "part of the fun", it's just bad design.

I can love a game despite it having these issues in its encounters, but to me it is an aspect to criticize when it happens and despite the repetitious nature of MMO design, I think this issue shouldn't just be glossed over because I think you can do challenge without these clunky elements.

[pixeldistractions]

Sleepover party time!

We had such high hopes for the chaotic placement of those sleeping bags. Shame the sims had so much trouble routing around them! 😖

So, while Jordan and Maria had their gold-star date filled with love and sand, we will imagine the kids had a blast, too, back at the Phoenix house. Let's imagine a night of staying up too late, junk food and movies. Well, it was mostly that. Kind of.

The sleepover event was impossibly unintuitive, and even in this giant house, even after moving the living room furniture further and further back to give them more space, they still couldn’t navigate around the sleeping bags to do practically anything. It took me forever to figure out how to get them to tell stories on the sleeping bags, or how to pass out snacks, or do any of the event tasks to raise the bar.

Then they also kept trying to go outside to play in the yard (at midnight) which made them change out of their pajamas into outerwear, which meant I had to change them back over and over again, until the point I eventually just locked the damn doors, lol!

Then they went to do yoga and meditate in Nessa's neglected yoga room, which, okay, that was cute. So I let them. Even though I had to change them back into pajamas again.

So, I figured it all out in the end, but it wasn’t immediately clear. It was frustrating and didn't inspire me to take any interesting pictures or make a story out of anything. I suppose I might have had an easier time doing a posed sleepover photoshoot, if I wanted the pictures, but I didn't do that because I wanted to complete the gameplay event.

For these sleeping bags. We got gold, we got the bags. So, score? 🙃

next -> // 5.3 start // index

[loki-zen]

Speaking of tho, call me a Pokémon old man bc I am, but I still don't Get some of these new types.

Steel is whatever i guess i don't object strongly, but Dark and Fairy can go fuck themselves.

Like ostensibly the idea behind Dark is balancing Psychic by giving it more weaknesses, but I feel like Ghost never got a chance at that - gen 1 Ghost failed as a counter to Psychic bc all available ghost Pokémon were also poison and there were no normal damaging Ghost moves, and I'd have liked to see how "Ghost but fixed" actually worked in a world where it wasn't immediately made to suck by utterly ubiquitous Dark and Fairy moves that kill them immediately because it's like whoever decided how many hit points they get thought that there were still Normal Pokémon out there who didn't get something Dark or Fairy every other move.

My main problem with Dark and Fairy Pokémon is two things:

1: it is completely unintuitive what they're strong and weak against. Their inclusion as common types/moves takes the overall feel of Pokémon type matchups from "basically intuitive with a few oddities you need to remember" to "in no small part simply an exercise in memorisation", is my gut level hot take. And it's worse if you're a returning player like me, because it's also way less clear whether a Pokémon you've never heard of will be one of these types based on its name/visual design than something like 'Fire' or 'Bug', so. Fuck me for trying to use Ghost Pokémon now there's actually a variety of them with really cool designs I guess.

2: They're just really annoying to fight against and to try to use, imo. Fairies be all sleep and healing and shit and cmon bro this is a random encounter I don't have all day, and Dark moves are all "well, if this, then this, but if you don't use it under just the right circumstances it's really weak or doesn't work (unless ofc you're an enemy and loki is just trying to show an animate candle or a haunted pumpkin a good time)". Cmon I just wanna fire a beam of something or maybe hit it with my claws

[whirligig-girl]

an angry rant about ksp

Disclaimer. KSP is, overall, a very good game. But it can be frustrating. This is not a negative review, it's me getting some frustrations off my chest.

Has anyone else ever noticed that Kerbal Space Program had sorta got worse over time? Like, it's also gotten better, new features were added, bugs were fixed, but I feel like basic parts of the game experience that used to be smooth and functional have been left to rot. New features or small changes made that might have had some useful advantages, but which make the experience just worse.

Here's three anecdotes about that.

Explosions. Most KSP players don't even remember a time when this was true, but did you know that if you crashed a rocket in KSP, it didn't always cause the game to stutter or freeze? If you go back and play old pre-alpha versions like 0.13.3 which are still available, or if you happen to have a copy of the alpha versions like 0.18 or 0.20, you would find that like, yeah, these are worse versions and are missing a lot of features, but exploding rockets, like, just works.

And like it or not, but exploding rockets is a core part of KSP's gameplay. It's half of how it sells itself. Probably a slim majority of players will build absurd designs, watch them crash, and never reach the Mun, and they'll have a lot of fun with it anyway.

But. Like. When you do crash. You. have. to watch. it. frame by frame. as it. writes blast awesomeness to the log. or recalculates the vessel tree. or. whatever it's doing. I don't know the technical side of things when it comes to parts and vessels, I'm a planet girlie. Either way, it saps all the joy you could get out of watching the drama of a rocket failure. It's just a slog. I looked up this issue and it seems the community consensus is it's inherent and unfixable. But like. It's not in older versions!

I'm sure whatever change they made that causes that bug was like, good and important or whatever. But that they don't seem to have accounted for how much worse it makes this key part of the game.

Pinned Orbits. The original design philosophy behind the map view was to not let the view get unnecessarily cluttered up, so as to enhance readability and minimize the slope of the learning curve. To see the apoapsis or periapsis would require mousing over them. But eventually players and Squad realized that this was slightly tedious, and they implemented the ability to pin the apoapsis or periapsis marker to see their numerical values onscreen. Genuinely good feature, very useful, however.

The button to pin the orbit is right click. The right click button is also the control used for changing a maneuver node between velocity mode and delete/orbit increment mode. And most maneuvers will be done right at periapsis or apoapsis, and will end with the maneuver having an apsis near it. So if you try to right click a maneuver node. Good luck, because the game would rather display the numerical values of the apsides instead. It's fine. It can be worked around. But what was supposed to be a quality of life improvement became a quality of life detriment.

Orbit Encounter Prediction. When you make maneuvers in current versions of KSP, or even burn manually, you'll sometimes run into flickering trajectories, encounters that the game's not sure if you have or not. Small changes to your orbit can completely get rid of the encounter. Eventually you realize the encounter isn't even on this orbit, it may be tens or hundreds of days into the future. This is especially common in the Jool system.

It is probably the worst bug on this list, because it takes an intuitive and useful manuever prediction system that like, sets the standard for orbital mechanics games, and it makes it messy and clunky and unintuitive and difficult. When planning encounters you have to check if the displayed encounter will actually happen on this orbit or not. Sometimes it will decide not to show an encounter that you definitely do have, which can lead to catastrophe. Sometimes it would rather show you a far future encounter than let you see your close approaches for this orbit.

And it didn't used to do this! I tracked the bug down to 1.8.0, which was a change to the unity version. And the bug was never fixed in the remaining few years of KSP development. Saps all the fun out of the Jool system and lots of complex planet mod systems.

But KSP 1.12.5 has a ton of features and bugfixes that 1.7.3 doesn't have, and all the best mods are on 1.12.5. so i have to put up with it.