Posts made by Kestrel

My family: When are you going to get a real job?
My psychiatrist: There's no need to wash your hands obsessively. What are you afraid might happen?

Me, with OCD, hand sanitiser in every handbag and coat pocket for years, able to work flexibly from home:

@Tinuviel Yes, by quite a bit, both in terms of contagion rate and lethality. I don't have exact numbers for comparison and I'm not a doctor. But:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
https://www.livescience.com/new-coronavirus-compare-with-flu.html

It's also worth bearing in mind we've had generations to build up immunity to the common flu whereas COVID-19 is a "new" virus. So, long-term, this might just end up being another kind of illness we have to get used to over time and/or through vaccines. The other alternative was that the virus be successfully contained, but that seems like a bit of a lost cause now, at least where I live. It hasn't hit London hard just yet, but there are confirmed cases in multiple boroughs, including the one where I live and several adjacent to it, and going by how quickly it's spread in other countries I'd be genuinely surprised if I don't end up catching it, or haven't yet.

I'm actually not worried, but I understand why other people are. It's just that of all the bad things going on in the world right now, while I feel sympathy for those more likely to be personally affected, this particular crisis is much less likely to affect me or anyone I'm close to. I have more to fear from, for example, environmental catastrophe and fascism in the not too distant future.

@bored said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

It's worth pointing out that the %'s are very guesswork-y and vary considerably between reporting institution, so hanging on single % changes is not particularly meaningful (apparently people were accusing my governor of conspiracy theory-esque minimizing the threat because he quoted a lower %, but it was simply from a different source). These are also likely to be higher than the actual mortality rate, because people who are mildly or non-symptomatic account for the bulk of cases yet rarely make it into the statistics at all.

They are valuable in a comparative sense because other illnesses are measured the same way, with the same flaws, and these %s are an order of magnitude higher than typical flu mortality.

The percentages also vary considerably by age group.

For people under 40, the mortality rate is around 0.2%, and the WHO has said that 80% of people who contract the disease will experience only very mild symptoms. I'm under 40, live in a crowded city, am in excellent physical health, and lately I've been sniffling a bit. For all I know I could've already contracted it and just not know it. Most of the people hoarding obsessively really don't need to, and I'm not going to. I'm pretty sure I'll be just fine; I'm more worried about the risk of infecting other people, if I do (or have) contract(ed) it.

For people over 80 however, the risk is 14.8% — 21.9% (total estimate, vs. based only on confirmed cases). It's also killing men more than women, and is significantly higher for people with preexisting health conditions like heart disease.

So while the overall mortality rate is 2% — 3.4%, that's not a useful number for anyone looking to evaluate their or their loved ones' personal risk. It's mostly just useful for estimating what chunk of the population we're likely to see wiped out by the numbers.

Keep your grandparents home safe, fam.

@Wretched

A non-violent direct action group I'm a member of is holding discussions online about ways to raise awareness for environmental issues.

Due to strangely pervasive spelling mistakes, a legit discussion is now being held on the viability of gorilla gardening.

I shouldn't laugh.

At the moment, my time is very limited and I would be unlikely to roll into another MU*. That said if I had more time and fewer existing games to hold my interest, a cyberpunk MU* would be at the very top of the list of places I'd want to check out.

Double bonus points if it has overt anticapitalist themes, which I believe any good cyberpunk setting should.

Double post because life is good I guess? Shockingly. When did that happen, wow.

'You have rogue girl written all over you' — conversation about D&D archetype preferences.

Thank you, I will take that compliment.

I love that my life is currently filled with people who are significantly smarter than I am, but who are also engaging and compassionate, and that I'm learning so many new things because of it, including about myself.

@scar said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

Uiland says, "Why don't you run and get Patrick?"

Uiland says, "Go on, run and get your "savior". The only One who truly got to know me. The rest of you trusted his description of me."

Is he trying to impersonate Mr Robot?

@silverfox said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

@L-B-Heuschkel said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

@Kestrel You've seen mine. 

ngl, I read this as, "I've totally sent you a dick pic!"

Before people get judgemental, I do want it clarified that I did give @L-B-Heuschkel my explicit, enthusiastic consent to send me pictures of Richard Nixon at any and every opportunity.

@SinCerely said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

@Kestrel said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

I have a strong preference for:

Hey those are my boobies how did you get that

Hello Sin

I have a strong preference for:

@Apos said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

@Caryatid I legit think of this every time he comes up.

Can we get real about dick pics for a second? I am interested in this armchair psychoanalysis. Why do people send them? What is the motive? What goes through a person's mind when they snap a picture of their penis and then share it with a stranger? I am genuinely curious.

Science doesn't know. Or does it? Are there studies on dick pics yet?

Vent peeve.

I wish I knew how to help someone with anxiety.

I mean, I have anxiety. So from a personal perspective, I know there's pretty much nothing someone else in my life can really do to help if I'm in bad shape. Right now, though, I'm fine. I have spoons in spades. My mana bar for providing others with emotional labour could not be fuller.

Unfortunately, I have other friends with similar issues (because like attracts like I guess) who are not in good shape and I don't know how to help them. If I could just give them my spoons, I would. I've been reaching out and saying, 'Hey, if you need someone to talk to, I am here for you, friend.' But they're just not able to accept that help right now and while personal experience means I rationally know I can't be mad at them for it, it is just so frustrating.

I am a spanner friend. I need to fix people's problems. Accepting I can't is the hardest thing.

That man is a leaf on the wind.

@SquirrelTalk said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

I have never known any amount of armchair psychology to be useful to anyone. We're not the ones who are going to solve whatever's wrong with that guy. Best just to keep them out of our lives, imo.

I find it very useful. If I know what's precisely wrong with the kinds of people liable to make my life worse, and I know how to spot early warning signs of their behaviour, then I know how to protect myself.

Did this guy make my life worse? No. Not even a little bit. But there are a million other guys like him out there, and they are everywhere. They're incredibly predictable and not nearly as special as they like to think. It doesn't hurt to go through life with a radar in mind.

Ah, gosh. I’m gonna go there, aren’t I? Yes, yes I am.

Toxic masculinity (I’m aware half of the people reading this have suddenly tuned out) is what leads to this kind of behaviour and I tend to find it very telling, when dealing with these types of people, to look at not just how they treat women, but how they treat other men.

I noted that one of the red flags that set me off with this guy early on wasn’t just his jokes about wanting to fight/spank the female characters in the scene with him, but also his OOC “joke” about wanting to use the only other male character there in his workout. Said male character, at 6’1”, was comparatively shorter, was described as having a lean physique, had an intellectual-type job description. Aksel on the other hand seemed to have been designed as a concept purely on the premise of machismo. I mean here’s his shortdesc, as noted by @bored …

I don’t even know how he did that, how he made it red, but it seems to fit in pretty neatly with the rest of his attention-seeking behaviour, doesn’t it? And again in isolation this would be meaningless, but in combination with other stuff?

I am very wary of people who, regardless of gender, treat any encounter with individuals who share their gender as an opportunity to compete/posture. The type of abuse directed at men vs. women is obviously different in the case of toxic masculinity, but when all women are nothing more than sex objects, and that’s your main drive, it follows that all men are competition, and your entire self-worth is based on being better, more “Alpha” than other men — as defined by being more “manly”, taller, physically stronger, better at getting women.

Azazello/Cullen is another person in this hobby who’s very easy to spot for this; while he treats all female characters (if, and only if, he believes them to be female-played) as prospective rape/stalker victims, he also has a penchant for going on murder sprees anytime he encounters male characters whom female characters/players in the game seem to gravitate to, especially if they’re thought highly of and their masculinity is non-traditional, e.g. based on being a good person, an upstanding citizen, a “caretaker”, rather than raw physical power. His characters are always super tall, white, blonde, and his descriptions wax poetic about both his musculature and his very European heritage, his supreme pale-blondness.

When I want to know which men are “safe” for me as a woman, I very often look first at how they are with other men. And if you want evidence of male-targeted misogyny in action, look at PUA & InCel culture.

@JinShei said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

@Scissors said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

It's morbidly fascinating to read about this sort of behavior. The fact that when this guy's loudly blaming people for not having "adult conversations" with him, there is a complete and utter lack of self-awareness of the irony. I mean, even a dog will recognize its own reflection after looking into a mirror enough times.

Can people really be this blind to their own faults? Sometimes I think it is by choice.

I don't think this person lacks self-awareness. I don't think he's blind to his own faults.

I think he knows exactly what he's doing and is being purposefully manipulative by accusing others of faults he knows they might care about, but that he personally doesn't. He's playing gotcha. Can't accuse people of being immature if you can't conduct yourself maturely, now can you? Don't lose face. Stay dignified. Be tolerant. Even as I behave in a manner that is undignified, intolerant and inconsiderate towards you. Gotta prove you're better than me! Otherwise we're the same, you and I; don't stoop to my level.

It's just another variation of the ol' 'so much for the tolerant left'.

I definitely got this. He gotcha'd so gleefully that as soon as I banned him he ran to discord channels with the log claiming he caught an Admin treating him badly because I called him on his shit. I was grateful for both channels owner's disinterest or rejection of his bullshit.

For me, the tipoff in my brief communication with him was this bolded part:

<PM> (to Aksel) Rosa (Romeo) says, "Hey. I wasn't sure how to approach this the other day but truthfully I wasn't comfortable with the last scene I had with you and don't think we would mesh. Your character seems very macho/aggressive and sexually forward. I'm not really into that and would prefer to avoid in future."

<PM> (to Rosa) Aksel blinks slowly, "Um, Okay. I will go ahead and leave you alone and avoid any scenes that you have signed up for in that case. My apologies for Aksel trying to be playful back with Pippin and the like after the joke that had been made. Or will find another game so you are comfortable.

My ex used to threaten suicide any time I tried to leave the relationship, any time I tried to refuse him sexually. He would make it sound like this was something I wanted, that I had asked for, when in actuality all I had said was no to a specific thing. It was done to guilt me, make me feel bad about wanting to police my own comfort levels. And suddenly in a communication where I had said something like, 'this hurt me' or 'I didn't like that', I was the bad guy, for making him feel bad about doing something bad.

Further then twisted as:

<RP Requests> Aksel would come to rp but has been informed that his character is essentially just a muscle bound asshole who makes people feel uncomfortable and that my rp style is just shit. So...

<RP Requests> Sam says, "From what he told me, he got a page--didn't say from who--denigrating his character, his RP style, and generally being very unpleasant."

Not what I said, and I wasn't even in the scene he was being invited to.

I also don't buy the innocent "blinks slowly" reaction he gave when I said his behaviour had made me uncomfortable. Looking at this thread, I know I'm not the first person to have ever said something like this to him. It's simply impossible to believe that after however many incidents of him behaving this way and having it pointed out to him, he remains oblivious.

He essentially did a mini-version of what he threatened to do to Firefly; instead of calling me out on MSB, he called me out in the public chat. And his PM communications with various game owners make explicit that this behaviour pattern of his is a calculated tactic he knows to be effective enough to use as a threat, smugly, not simply as an emotional outburst of someone genuinely hurt.

QED: I don't believe his bullshit.

I do feel sympathy for him though. It must be hella sad to go through life not being able to have any kind of meaningful relationship.