I bought a fancy desktop PC recently so I’m not in the market. Otherwise I would consider it, but only if the desktop environment was usable for general computing. I believe it is, but I’m not sure if its version of Linux would be best for like software development.

Sometimes the word “Interesting” causes my brain to recall the character generation in Morrowind. The guy says something like ““Interesting. Now before I stamp these papers, make sure this information is correct.””

Conservatism, mostly.

Just remove all violent people first

Gop is like a clock where only the minute hand is stopped and the hour hand is flapping all over. Sometimes it’s kind of correct, but not for the bigger picture.

Communication aims at information exchange,

Metadata is data. Skipping small talk is exchanging less information.

I’ve had a couple cases where I didn’t change their mind on the spot, we at least reached a point of “I see what you’re saying and why you believe that” that was better than we started.

It’s just a lot of work, and is doomed if the other person isn’t present in good faith. But it’s nice when it happens. It helps to ask sincere questions, and try to clear up any assumptions you might not share.

I think a lot about the guy I worked with that said he was going to Palantir. We were like “but what if they have you doing awful things?” He was like, big shrug. He was always friendly to people in the office, but I guess that’s as far as it went.

Have you talked to a lot of tech workers? I feel like there’s a set of left wing ones, a larger set of libertarian types, and an even larger set of people who are shockingly ignorant of politics and history.

Probably get as many conservatives out of power as possible. Once they’re gone we can work on climate change, better electoral systems, removing the evils of capitalism, and so on.

One time in a game of DND the players were exploring a strange cave system, and found a strange thick goo collecting in a pool. Players being players, one of them decided to eat some.

It was, in my notes, some sort of celestial honey made by these extra planar insects that were causing some of the region’s problems. It was supposed to taste amazing, but with some drawbacks. I started to blank when trying to describe how good it was, and the phrase that came out was “it’s like… It’s like … it’s like seven pizzas!”

The player eating it, his eyes lit up and was like “AMAZING”

The other players were like “wat”

I think that adequately captured how delicious it is but also maybe you shouldn’t be eating it.

I could accept it matters more than 0, but it is pretty far down the list of issues given the state of the world.

I occasionally become insufferable and recommend people play other games, but people don’t really care. It’s like getting people off twitter.

This is broadly true, but given the low level of rules mastery I’ve seen I say “shared understanding of the rules” is a generous description.

Still, like a national fast food chain sometimes you just want something familiar even if it’s not as good as other options. You know it’s not likely to be worse than your expectations

Everything is an option according to them but it’s ultimately isn’t.

It really is a more restrictive system than people think. If you have a concept that’s like “psychic batman” you can’t really make that concept go in DND. Trivial to make in the other games I play the most (fate, CofD).

D&D is not as good as it is popular. It’s a very idiosyncratic game that’s mostly focused on a particular kind of play, but people treat it like it’s a general purpose tool.

Clearly people can have fun with it, and that’s what really matters. I’m still convinced many of them would have more, easier, cheaper, fun if they picked up a different game.

I briefly toyed with some of the early image generation stuff. It was a fun toy for making NPCs for RPGs.

But now it’s everywhere and being used as an excuse to squeeze labor harder and deliver dubious value. If it just stayed as a toy I wouldn’t mind it much. I get annoyed at the aggressive “do you want me to rewrite that for you??” shit that pops up now.

I would have sworn he was a lich…

One of the interesting side effects of doing a modern day game is when your party finally kills the lich, they can’t celebrate it openly. Not like a fantasy game where you can parade back to town with the dragon’s head on display.

I like to think some rag tag group of awakened mages have been fighting Cheney for years, and they finally got him.

I don’t understand how some people who are moderately wealthy are so bad at money.

If I was making 300k for ten years I’d probably be able to retire.

Fucking rich people complaining about poor people spending $2 on candy when they’re blowing all their money

He then said, “there are people who don’t work at all that get more money from the government than what we earn, why should they get money?”

What kind of insane welfare programs does he imagine exists?

Unemployment in new york, for example, caps out at $440/week for six months. That’s $22,880/yr, ignoring that you only get half a year. That’s under minimum wage here.

For comparison, entry level software jobs at startup here are easily $100k.

Meanwhile, the wealthy can take loans out against their stock or other collateral to access their wealth without paying taxes.

Sometimes people will be like, “Poor people should work for their money!” But none of those people seem to be upset that a lowly 10-millionaire can comfortably live on an extremely safe investment portfolio. Like, bringing in mid six figures on bonds and index funds without doing a damn thing.