Posts made by Ganymede

@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

It's not actually that I don't think there should be any risks in MUing -- mostly because that's impossible, pie-in-the-sky idealism. The RL scenario you describe demonstrates why.

Just because a goal seems impossible doesn't mean we can't strive towards it.

I think that if there are reasonable, simple steps we can take to minimize the risks that exist, they are worth exploring.

Then do so. Justifying your reasons for doing so isn't necessary, nor is admonishing anyone for deciding not to do so. If there's one thing I've learned from the "more open" era of debating MUs on forums, it is that stating your intentions and following through is more productive than trying to coerce anyone else to agree with your rationale. I've wasted a pretty hour trying to explain why flat-gain XP and XP caps are beneficial, and others have run with those ideas years after.

Do your thing.

@Ghost said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

Yourself having a food allergy, I hope you didn't feel like I was belittling people with such allergies. The statement wasn't about excluding people with allergies as a whole, but the all around risk in vague relation to MU-hobby.

If you think I thought you were belittling my people, I say to you: nigga plz.

To be blunt, I roll my eyes at the thought of risk in gaming. In my opinion, if the thought of risk in MUing comes across your mind, you should probably not MU at all, just as I would remind the average xenophobe that they ought to avoid playing Mass Effect games because omg fucking aliens is unpatriotic dey took err jerbz. There shouldn't be any risk in playing on MUs, and I believe this is @surreality's position.

I concur with it.

But it's impossible to predict exactly what risk exists. No one could have predicted that my partner would have a psychotic break one day at practice for A Streetcar Named Desire because she had repressed a sexual assault that she suffered in college. She never told me; she didn't tell anyone; but that made it no less scary or disturbing. But the issue was addressed quickly and calmly, and things returned to normal, because the people involved were empathetic, sympathetic, and caring. And I believe this is @faraday's position: you cannot stop all harms, no matter how many warnings you give, and no matter how aware people are, because trauma is a strange, disturbing, scary thing that pops up without warning a lot.

I'm going to keep eating at restaurants because I'm a foodie, and while I may not be able to enjoy everything everywhere, I still enjoy lots of it many places. The best we can do as a community is try to be accommodating without throttling the themes that we want to explore in relative safety.

@Ghost said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

I think the food allergy analogy actually works pretty well.

Kind of.

Do you have a food allergy? I do. It's an insidious sort of allergy, something which even my mother doesn't always watch out for. (She fed me something with allergens in it last night.)

I'm allergic to legumes: beans, peanuts, etc. Specifically, I'm allergic to proteins in the seeds. The proteins are mostly eliminated through brewing, and don't exist in the oil; soy sauce is fine and so is peanut oil. However, isolated soy protein is in a lot of things, especially store-bought, pre-packaged frozen meats. A lot of "Asian sauces" also use some form of black bean in it.

In my case, I assume all of the risk. If I eat the wrong thing, I'm the one doing the choking and dying: not you, not the owner, and not the cook. Further, in my case, there's no way in God's green earth that a cook is going to be able to make reasonable accommodations for me. And, in my opinion, it would be my damn fault, so that's why I carry an epipen.

I pick my meals and restaurants very wisely, see.

And if a customer comes in and announces they have an allergy, everything you listed is how most restaurants would accommodate the customer. And as long as reasonable precautions are taken, there is absolutely no risk of a successful lawsuit. At all.

So, your analysis isn't great, and your analogy isn't great. At least, not in the liability context or from the perspective of someone who has to deal with a shitty, shitty set of allergies.

Sidenote: on how to improve any improv, or how to make any MU* scene better. Seriously. https://medium.com/@TimELyons/the-greatest-improv-advice-i-can-give-674c09f07376

@Roz said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

And yet I've seen people on this thread basically misreading stuff to be like, "You're saying that I'm a terrible person because I don't want to put up an outline of my entire plot!!!" I don't know. I feel like people are not so far apart on this as it seems to have come about in this thread.

It's easy to talk past people and misinterpret what they are saying when there is too much being said for a person to get a quick, cogent understanding.

I'm watching and listening, but I've elected not to engage, even to clarify others' good points.

@Arkandel said in State of Things:

1. Isn't this assuming that given such a massive number of documents human beings would have had a significantly better rate of success reading the numbers?

It may, but the use of the program does not absolve the attorneys from their duty to keep client information confidential. The program, to a certain extent, encourages the sort of laziness and complacency that has led to the dullness in legal minds that I have noticed over the past few years.

Most attorneys use the software and then comb over the documents again to check for accuracy. This means the attorneys have to review the documents anyway.

2. With humans there are tiny margins to improve the failure rate; you can offer better training, fire employees and try to hire better next time, but you might or not be successful. With software you can identify potential problems (is it the camera? the lighting? the OCR algorithm?) specifically try to fix them.

You can try. The responsibility for failure ultimately falls on the attorney, not the software company. Ergo, it is better for the attorney to do their own checking, which obviates the need for the software as a tool to accomplish the task.

3. Accuracy might be important but so is speed. If processing all those millions of documents takes 100x the time machines do it then the end result might be worse than having to deal with the failure rate (and always factoring in (1) above). Oh and cheaper. Much cheaper.

Cheaper, yes. But cheaper isn't always better. Not for the client; not for the justice system; and certainly not for an attorney's malpractice carrier.

@Ganymede said in State of Things:

This would be an abject failure in practice.

Because it already is, with the most basic of things.

Take, for example, the automatic redacting of social security numbers. And then, read this article.

https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2011/05/25/studying-frequency-redaction-failures-pacer/

This document reveals a failure rate of roughly 10% back in 2011. The software for the federal court's PACER system is largely unchanged since then, but let's suppose that the rate is reduced to 5%. Based on the same paper, roughly 0.1% of papers filed have an SSN on them. So, that means, for 500,000,000 million documents, there are 500,000 documents with SSNs, and of these there are 25,000 failures. I suppose that 25,000 revealed SSNs -- for bankruptcy clients too -- isn't a huge data breach, but it is a substantial ethical breach as far as attorneys go.

You really can't depend on the software. At all. Automation is good to pick up printed fonts, but is terrible at hand-writing, a form of memorialization that lawyers still use and rely on constantly. And, no, old fucks aren't ready to change their ways.

So, no. It's a non-starter, really. Not for a reasonable firm, at least. Most large firms whore out their document reviews to legal mills that carry substantial malpractice insurance, and none of those mills are going to incur the liability of relying on software.

@Arkandel

This would be an abject failure in practice.

@Apu said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

And other times, someone might be new to the style of offered RP and not realize it's a bit more than they can handle, emotionally, until it's too late.

At these times, I propose having that player duck out, and catch up with them later as to how their PCs would have participated, so that they are still included in the RP (sort of).

@Auspice said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

''this is the werewolf tea sipping society scene at the garden party center, formal attire required''

This won't happen because the Elodoth in W:tF 2E unequivocally suck.

@kitteh said in FS3:

One, the one (action-y) thing she's supposed to be good at, well, she's actually just the same as everyone else (because everyone min-maxes). Two, the thing she's bad at, well, it makes her preeeetty bad and she's mostly always going to be that way. I think she can bump the skill once in a reasonable timeframe, but after that it will be (RL) years?

Most people on BSG:U should be good at what they do. Pilots are all going to be exceptional pilots; Marines are all going to be exceptional combatants. And the points allow you to do this, and this seems rather realistic to me.

Frankly, I like FS3. A lot. I think you need to funnel specialization the way @faraday has proposed, which is to limit the number of Attributes and Action Skills above "Good."

Edited to add: regarding Connor McDavid, amassing the most points does not make you the best player on a hockey team.

@Vorpal said in Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Thread:

I'm playing it on the PC. But honestly, my biggest issue is with the story, the way the story is told, the shamefully restricted relationship choices for gay players, and the lack of polish and appearance are only secondary issues to me. I don't care if they make the game look prettier and more polished if it's still the same narrative shit sandwich, if you catch my drift.

I guess? Last time I checked, this wasn't a homosexual/heterosexual free-for-all game, so I honestly can't give two shits as to who or what you can go after. Isn't it reasonable to believe that someone doesn't want to nail Ryder?

(Except Suvi, of course. She and I, we shall be magical.)

The backgrounds are prettier, but the textures are not. I'm playing on the PS4, and what I'm getting looked very polished to me -- far more than Fallout 4, at least. The game's enough to keep me locked into it.

But, sure, FF15's smoother -- much smoother. And The Last of Us has a better story. And I prefer the game controls of ME3 over this overly-complicated hokum-poke-um.

Truly, if I want perfection, I just go and MU*.

@faraday said in Fifth Kingdom:

BSGU uses FS3 Third Edition. The rules are publicly available but the code is not (yet), so... you're kind of stuck with 2nd unless you're willing to customize the code.

Ah. I presumed that FS3 3E was readily available. Or could be. In which case, get it. Because, why not?

@surreality said in State of Things:

And those consequences are almost never, ever for them. Which is intensely frustrating.

This is why I'm pro-Nazi-punching.

Seriously. Punch them. Hard.

@TimmyZ said in Fifth Kingdom:

FS3 is open in cg, no limit, maxing an action skill or two will limit in other areas. Merit is based in reputation and traits, subjective to rp and getting votes from other players. This will net modifiers. XP growth is 1 a week, no more. Growth will be seen more in traits and reputation. This can even raise the max dice pool above the 16 standard max (4 attribute and 12 skill). FS3 has a pool limit of 21 regardless. But trait and reputation are meant as the equalizer.

I think you ought to adopt some of the limitations placed on the FS3 as used on BSG: Unification. Maybe my reading is off, but the number of points you're giving people seems really, really high to me.

@Jaded said in General Video Game Thread:

I agree. And the expansions was pretty much that friend coming back to visit for a week before telling you that it will be the last time they can come back.

Chicks vomiting on you after sex FTW.

@Vorpal

What platform are you playing the game on?

@Wizz said in Fear and Loathing:

I really don't like behavior like that, but I am more than willing to admit that I am just butting in and being a total asshole in response to something that irks me and I will drop it.

I'm very much the same way, so if you'll drop it and admit to being a total asshole butting in on a conversation that really doesn't even, on the surface, seem to be much of a complaint, I'm for it.

@Wizz said in Fear and Loathing:

Nnnnno, I'm the one actually being aggressive-aggressive, because I find your behavior here shitty and I'm directly calling you on it. You're the one constantly rephrasing events and trying to play it all off to place your actions in the thread in a better light even though they're literally one page back. But whatever, good day to you too.

You're not helping.

I've made countless of applications, and thereafter waited. In some cases, I didn't come back because I do get busy from time to time on other games or in real life.

I didn't read @magee101 as a knock on staff at all. There's no obligation in starting a character to complete it. Waiting 72 hours is arguably unreasonable for a response, but it happens -- and I don't see @magee101 going on a campaign about it. In fact, @magee101 seems to have made another character that was approved rather quickly.

Don't lose sight of the forest through the trees. It makes no sense to rag on a player that seems to be happily playing on your game.

I mean, I applied there, played for a bit, then had to ditch because life was busy and I had to make some cuts. That has nothing at all to do with the quality of RP or staff on the game.

@surreality said in State of Things:

Welp. That covers the rest of the class, pretty sure, somewhere or other in there.

Other pre-existing conditions:

FUCKING BEING ALIVE. BECAUSE IT LEADS TO DEATH.

@surreality

Good news! Domestic violence and sexual assault aren't alone! Senator Brown reports that the following are also considered pre-existing conditions:

Anorexia
Anxiety
Bipolar Disorder
Breast Cancer
Bulimia
Cervical Cancer
Depression
Eating Disorders
Hysterectomy
Mental Health Issues
Obesity
Panic Disorders
Restless Leg Syndrome
Seasonal Affective Disorder
Skin Cancer

(Amusingly not on Brown's list -- SMOKING.)

Basically, the only way that you get coverage without a pre-existing condition denial or rate bump is hitting the Goldilocks standard.

Excuse me.