Posts made by BetterJudgment

I generally can handle unfamiliar commands. On Among the Stars, though, the game couldn't interpret what I was sending from Atlantis so that just trying to say something on the public channel resulted in 'Huh?' three-quarters of the time.

@AmyK said:

http://www.startrekkin.net/

If you want a site that is less about the coded space than about roleplay, at least in my experience.

I connected to this game this evening. At around 8:30 PM Eastern Time, each of the eight bits logged in has been idle between one and seven hours, and the top three bits (two admins and a "player') have been logged on for 48 days. This doesn't look like it's worth the effort to investigate further.

@Cobaltasaurus said:

@Sunny said:

@icanbeyourmuse said:

I think I tried Kushiel's Debut. Or some Kushiel game. The players weren't welcoming nor were staff. At least towards someone who has never read the books. I was gonna try it out because a friend was there.

I totally do not think it could have been KD. The players and staff there (there are two of them) are the most helpful, friendly bunch ever. My mind has been blown, seriously. It's probably been one of my best new-to-a-game experiences, right up there with Leading Edge, Redemption, and Second Pass.

I will second this. Every time I've gone to, or back to, KD the players have been incredibly friendly. Might have been Custodius / Zephyr's Kushiel game.

Maybe it was Terre d'Ange. I was there for a brief while, and it was about as much fun as having someone squee in your ear nonstop for hours on end. I wouldn't mind trying another Kushiel game just because I like alternative history. (I was playing a Lombard. I am ridiculous.) I've never read the books, though, and BDSM holds zero interest for me, so it may not be that good of a fit.

@HelloRaptor said:

@BetterJudgment said:

@Arkandel said:

A leaked video of Avengers 2: Age of Ultron is out!

Wow. When SNL turned to crap (which I think was 1980, but I might have missed some good stuff later), they didn't stop, did they? I made it through twenty seconds of this before it became too excruciating to watch.

I guess we can identify the decade during which you lost your sense of humor, then, in case it's important to future generations.

It was definitely later than when SNL started to suck, since that was 1980 and this (which is admittedly funnier than just about anything SNL ever did) was 1982.

@Arkandel said:

A leaked video of Avengers 2: Age of Ultron is out!

Wow. When SNL turned to crap (which I think was 1980, but I might have missed some good stuff later), they didn't stop, did they? I made it through twenty seconds of this before it became too excruciating to watch.

So far I've found one MOO (Where No One has Gone Before) that seems like a decent game but has made the setting into something that doesn't attract me and one bizarrely MUD-like MUSH (TrekMUSH: Among the Stars). Anyone know of any other active Star Trek games?

@Luna said:

I'm an accountant. No, I will not answer your phones as well. Quit lying on your job postings. Don't ask me for salary requirements after demanding at least 8+ years of experience then counter with $17/hour. I hate you all.

Sounds like they wanted an administrative assistant who can use Quicken. Did the application ask how many words a minute you can type?

@Admiral said:

I took American Lit in college. The entire goddamn semester was Tennessee Williams. I was so, so, SO disappointed. Because I hate, hate, HATE Tennessee Williams.

I had an English lit prof in a theater survey class who loved Tennessee Williams (although to his credit he had us read many other things, including Ionesco and Tom Stoppard). I wasn't quite intending to troll him, but I inadvertently did so when we were watching The Night of the Iguana. If you know the play, the innocent New England spinster Hannah Jelkes tells the story of being out on a boat with a sad and desperately lonely Australian business man who asks her to remove and let him hold an article of her clothing. She did so, and the man was satisfied. The exchange in class went like this:

Me: I think Hannah Jelkes is a Christ figure. After all, the Australian business man touches the hem of her garment and is healed.
Dr. T: (exploding) He was masturbating while holding her panties!
Me: Well, there's all kinds of healing.

Possibly some of my problems with students are simply karma.

@Cobaltasaurus There's so much else worth reading in Plato that I'm vicariously pissed off at your idiot of an instructor for making you hate him. Please, trash this instructor in a level-headed, detailed, and specific manner on the end of semester evaluation, because if what you are describing is what's going on, that instructor is being lazy as hell. And I say that as someone who regularly gets trashed on evaluations, although for things like, "History is boring," "I hate having to take this general education class," and "This was too hard because I don't want to read and write outside of class and just want to take multiple choice tests that you tell me the answers to in advance."

If I want to hear about alcoholism and addiction as the subject of somebody's discourse, I'll go to a meeting. If I want to to read something where alcoholism is a one factor shaping a story about many other things, I"ll read Charles Bukowski. I can't imagine reading someone's "triumph over self-inflicted adversity" story unless they're damn funny and unsparing of themselves. Otherwise, it's just another Afterschool Special.

I can't get being "so STEM" that you can't muster interest in any other subject, though. I grew up reading myth, fantasy, and my father's issues of Scientific American (from the 60s and 70s when they were good). The only reason I never liked lab sciences when I was first in school was that I was too much of a klutz and a fuck-up to be able to do anything right. Yes, crappy instructors can kill anything, but I've known some excellent and rigorous ones in the humanities.

An 'ignore' function would be nice about now.

I first saw Star Trek in its first season, just before I turned seven. I was still watching it when I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in the theater just before I turned nine. I'm sure that I would have been a far different person--and that my life would be far poorer--without both of these things.

On a professional board I belong to, someone who reports having well-controlled but nonetheless serious mental health issues has asked very appropriately for advice about how to put support systems in place so that if he/she does have a psychotic break, he/she can recover quickly and with as little career impact as possible. (That's a solid concern when you're in a career where it can take years to find something other than multiple part-time positions or a one-year contract with no guarantee or even possibility of renewal.)

People who know about these things from professional, administrative, and personal points of view replied with what looks like solid, supportive advice... and then some chronic asshole posts, "Why do you do a job if it makes you unhappy? You're not doing anyone any favors. You should quit. I quit my job because I didn't like it and did something else for a while."

Sometimes, the only appropriate thing to say is, "Go die in a fucking fire." Since I can't say that there, I'm saying it here.

@HelloRaptor said:

Any fucking store that names their items Small, Large, Extra Large, or any variation on the same.

It's called Medium, goddamnit. I blame Starbucks.

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Tall is small.

@Admiral said:

I cheat on my eye test every time I get a new driver's license. They never test my driving or anything. I guess it's just something you have to do when you get a license for a new state?

I cheat, too. (I have amblyopia, so I close my right eye to force my left one to see the characters on the far left end of the line). I haven't had to take a driving test for nearly 40 years and ten changes of state.

@AmishRakeFight I would call. Actually, I would have called after a month of that.

@HelloRaptor Absolutely - correlation is not causality. As I read it, Nettleton et al are saying that there is not enough evidence yet to show even that consumption of artificial sweeteners by people who are overweight and have a large waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio (which has been identified as a positive marker for developing type-2 diabetes - see http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001230#s3) directly causes the problems with insulin sensitivity or insulin production that are causal factors in developing t2d. Different types of studies need to be done that focus as much as possible on the consumption of diet sodas/artificial sweeteners in general to demonstrate a causal link.

However, my take on this remains that avoiding or limiting diet sodas (and artificial sweeteners in general) is still a good idea for anyone who is diabetic, at least until this identified correlation is more fully investigated. My type-2 diabetes has been under good control for years, but between that, the high blood pressure and high cholesterol that go along with that, and chronic irritable bowel syndrome* that is brought on in part by artificial sweeteners, I find managing my diet to be a real pain in the ass. People that have to do that and take insulin (which I don't yet) likely must find it to be far worse. If avoiding something that has no nutritional value or known benefits might help, I'm for it.

___________
* Yes, I'm fully aware of the humor inherent in someone with my charming personality having chronic irritable bowel syndrome. And fuck you.

@HelloRaptor said:

You likely shouldn't be drinking diet sodas even if you are diabetic; studies suggest that consuming diet sodas may increase insulin resistance.

Which studies? Do you have any links? I've heard this before but the sum total of wading through the studies I have found come down to: Drinking diet soda frequently seems to lead to an unhealthy lifestyle and dietary decisions that contribute to blah blah blah.

Like so.

Essentially:

Despite accumulating evidence of the existence of these associations , we are cautious not to conclude causality between diet soda and the diabetic or pre-diabetic condition. The possibility of confounding by other dietary and lifestyle/behavioral factors cannot be excluded from these observational studies.

We're looking at the same study but drawing different conclusions. What I found later on in the conclusions of that article is that

daily diet soda consumption was associated with significantly greater risks of two metabolic syndrome components (incident high waist circumference and fasting glucose) and type 2 diabetes in this large, multi-ethnic cohort. These results corroborate findings from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities and Framingham studies and show that stronger adverse associations exist between diet soda and type 2 diabetes. Diet soda consumption, either independently or in conjunction with other dietary and lifestyle behaviors, may lead to weight gain, impaired glucose control, and eventual diabetes.

Now, my claim that there is some mechanism that links artificial sweeteners with insulin resistance was just sloppy. This study says about that:

Could artificial sweetener (the constituent unique from sugar-sweetened soda) adversely affect biological processes related to insulin resistance, glucose regulation, and adiposity? Over the life of the MESA cohort, several artificial sweeteners for sweetening diet beverages have been used by the soda industry. The sweeteners most commonly used in diet beverages had also changed from the initiation of MESA to the most recent examination. These dynamics make it difficult to attribute our findings to the biological effects of a particular artificial sweetener. Mechanistic studies in randomized, controlled settings addressing how artificial sweeteners consumed from diet beverages affect early markers of metabolic dysfunction are lacking (especially considering true-to-life exposure to multiple sweeteners). Data such as ours and those that preceded ours (1,2), suggest that such research is warranted. Current literature articles provide data on single sweeteners only, mostly aspartame (12,14,16,17,19–24), with a few using saccharin (11,16), and none using sucralose, which was more recently introduced to the beverage market. Only one study used a combination of artificial sweeteners (but did not include sucralose) (15), and no studies were long term nor did they include measures of glycemic control or insulin sensitivity.

So, it could be argued that if you already have type-2 diabetes and are carefully watching your weight and keeping your waist under control (since there does seem to be a association between midsection fat and insulin resistance), then you should be able to drink artificially sweetened sodas without any problems. I still don't drink them, but I had stopped drinking sodas altogether a decade before I developed type-2 diabetes just because I lost my taste for them. I also was never more than 20 lbs. overweight, but that extra weight was and still is at my gut. Probably for me it was a combination of diet, inactivity, and really crappy genetics: only two of seven male siblings including my father lived past age 60, with all of the rest suffering from hypertension and extremely high cholesterol although not all of them were overweight.

My only exercise is walking 2 one-mile routes to and from work, which I do as long as the temperature is above -10. I hate going to the gym, and, like Arkandel said up-thread, spending what for me is one-third of my free time in the evening working out is just not something I have been willing to do. However, my partner starts physical therapy for rehabilitation after back surgery next week, and I've already said I'll do the exercises with him so that we can both stay motivated.

Getting back on track to what? GRRM is basically writing increasingly formulaic softcore violence porn (and porn porn). His books are bodice-rippers for the WoW set.