Posts made by mietze

@Ganymede

Exactly. Believe me when I say that honestly a large part of why I'm doing what I'm doing, beyond my state, is for my cousins and their kids. They have suffered a lot and it's only going to get worse. That's what I tap into when I need to find my rage. Not at them. Most of the time. I do occasionally want to choke out the one with 6 children by 4 different men who constantly posts about how all the sluts who wear leggings in public to defraud all men are the reason why America's gone to hell in a hand basket.

I think the other thing that you have to look at is that huge swaths of the country, especially those left behind, have not been living under "liberal" governance. There can be lots of hopes and wishes, but if federal things are blocked by congress, or grants rejected by the state, or protection given to environmental polluters by the state, or state coffers being drained by revenue loss from huge tax breaks while the funding for schools and entitlement programs is eviscerated--that is something that is largely due to the states, not the president. Or even the national congress.

It's something that's lost on many people. I've had a lot of conversations about it with relatives and others.

But I have noticed that awareness is shifting to more awareness in general of how important local action is. Yes, there is still an influx of Bernie or Busters whose main involvement is wanting to change party infrastructure (which is fine and a valid thing to work on when you're a member), but a lot of them plus a lot of others are starting to engage on everything from why should we concede entrepreneurs and small biz to the republicans, to how do we support / address the concerns of agriculture (a large part of our state economy and stress point), public land use that benefits real live people, education policy to ensure that rural areas aren't hosed (and those areas tend to be pretty red).

I have noticed a steady stream of people, myself included, stepping away from armchair Facebook warrioring and just voting, to getting involved both in party structures and indie grassroots efforts.

So, I have observed and participated in and even started a lot of cross-dialogue and action, especially in my two very passionate areas of education and accessibility. But I can only speak for (and affect in a big way) my locality. You'd have to speak to people in the rust belt to know what is and isn't happening there.

I love my extended family, all of whom except one voted for Trump. Most are coal miners/from coal mining generational families.

I love them. I don't demonize them.

However. They ARE racist, xenophobic, homophobes who think they want a theocracy.

I think you would be greatly surprised at the diversity of background and current socio-economic as well as age/gender/orientation/race/religion/health status of the people present and the nature of the issues and topics discussed at my local party meetings. It's not preaching to the choir.

@Arkandel Actually I had a hotlink on my phone to register people to vote in my county. Every single person of age I talked to of which there were many had already registered. Our political party organization for the county had over 100 people ready to do the same as well as some in possession of the paper forms--to the same result.

Please don't buy into Trump's bullshit.

I was an election observer for my county. We had the biggest earliest turnout ever. It was amazing to see. I spent about 15-20 hours a week there as an observer for 4 weeks straight. Over a million votes just in my county and Trump was steamrollered like whoa.

Please don't buy into Trump's bullshit. It's not a fair assertion (because lets you and me be honest with each other, he wasn't really asking a question.)

Even post election the numbers showing up to my legislative district meetings keep growing and growing with people eager to get involved, from all walks of life, sacrificing time to be there. I and several newcombers ran for and got seats on the executive board for my LD. The county meetings are packed. We are expecting a record turnout at state just from observers,because so many citizens are eager to put pressure on leadership of my party and our elected officials to fight.

Please don't buy into Trump's alternative facts bullshit.

It is fucking amazing what's going on, and it's going to continue. Happy to talk in private since I don't want to spam here but...

Don't buy into his bullshit.

And yep, me and my oldest (who is 15, made their sign and asked to go with no prompting or guidance from me) were marching with our chosen family (which includes Cupcake).

My university required a single class in personal Finance for graduation (at least in my majors). It covered a lot of that plus how to set up your own biz, insurance, and the like.

It helped me out immensely, even almost 20 years later when I was setting up my PLLC.

I guess I haven't noticed this happening a lot. Other than someone deleting a double post or when they've asked something obvious that they then read further and saw the answer to.

I'm not sure this can be solved (only allowing deletions or editing for "good enough" reasons) unless you were to eliminate editing/deleting entirely (which I don't think is a good idea).

Other boards I've been part of have made it so mods have to approve any edits, but speaking as someone who's been a mod in that circumstance it's a real pain in the ass and burden on staff to deal with.

I think the main difference between wora and soapbox is that the average age and life experience skews much higher now than then, so people have a little more perspective than they did as teens/twentysomethings.

Also in regard to games, the people on them who are not balancing family and other commitments vs people with a ton of time to burn (except around midterms and finals) are the exception rather than the rule. Tolerance for certain behaviors has gone down. It's easier than ever to find other social outlets.

House guests that aren't my parents. and getting to hang out with friends from online that live too far away to see regularly.

And also keeping my fingers crossed that finally life will get back to normal after pre-Christmas crazy - Christmas - loss of my other job too - helping boss turn around and get everything cleaned up and out in less than 4 days - houseguest fun - New Years - kid birthday - back to school nuttiness - giant increase in volunteer commitment.

Frontier settings RL were often a far cry from the rest of societal norms, by necessity. Also keep in mind that "it was like x back then" history was not true for anyone but rich people.

Women worked and were expected to. The average age of marriage in the American colonies, esp outside of the Deep South would be shockingly old to most people's assumptions. Sex before marriage was common, if people bothered with formal marriage at all, and even amongst the puritans it wasn't uncommon for brides to be pregnant (since sometimes that was the only way to liberate oneself from their family in order to marry).

If you tried to do that on a "historical" MUSH people would whine that you were modernizing it.

So really I think you can take influences where you like, do what you wish, if some people don't like it hopefully they'll self select out and those that feel the need to loudly complain and disrupt can be shown the door.

One of the things I crave in roleplaying is being able to explore settings and themes that I would never in a million years want to experience RL and would actively campaign against in RL.

So, any given setting in a game in and of itself isn't that big of a deal to me as far as preventing me from playing there.

What I find problematic is if the theme is so draconian that it narrows the possibilities for dynamic character opportunities to a very shallow pool. This is, in my experience, often very unintentional.

I think that rigid socio-economic class (little to no mobility) is fine. Prejudice against certain races/gender/religions/other category is fine. But when you start locking down everything (As in, a game world where not only is there no social mobility but also no women can ever be anything other than broodmares or whores and can never be seen in public or make any decisions about themselves and also anyone who is not a native of <city/area> will be enslaved on sight) then while it may have a more "historical" or "different, no modern political correctness here!" feel, it also means that you are drastically reducing your capacity for interesting storytelling (IMO). Yes, there will always be some people who love playing outliers (I tend to be one of those myself) but no matter how good they are, it can be problematic (and chafing even to people who are in the able-to-do-things classes).

I think for a dynamic, vibrant RP environment, it's great to have some tension/restrictions--I wish more places did that. But when you put a choke hold on everything, it really bogs it down. Even if it doesn't attract some of the OOC problematic people who seem to love those environments because they think they're "alphas" or whatever the kids are calling it these days.

So, I would tend to favor a place that picks its restrictions carefully, and doesn't try to do everything.

Well, now I lost my back up job. Trying to decide if I can deal with just not working until preschool starts next year, or do I need to juggle now (without childcare costs eating everything or impacting partner's schedule too much.)

Introducing my teens to Ferris Bueller. They love it, Eldest even put down her phone to chortle out loud and pay full attention (big deal at 15!).

We should be celebrating, Surr. If she's late teens that means there's folks playing that are old farts even more than us!

Me too!

And I share Sunny's lack of good age gauging. Though I think to some degree, 30-40 can be super hard to gauge for anyone. I am constantly (and not by people trying to blow smoke up my ass) mistaken for being a decade+ younger than I am. It's not because I truly look younger than average than my age, but just that most people kind of look the same once they get out of their mid twenties until their mid forties it seems, especially women. (Unless you're a smoker). I am really good at gauging the age of children-teenagers, but that is only because I'm a mom and have spent so much time volunteering with youth organizations, I think.

Or I could be full of shit, and just a bad judge of age/bodies of adults. Who knows. The only class I almost failed in college was the meat grading one. I can't grade a cow's ass while it's still alive to save my own, apparently. (Once it's butchered it's easy peasy!)

A kickass person (not me) found a PB for my latest character, when I've been struggling a great deal and frankly with RL exploding I've barely had time to pick my nose, much less look around for a PB!

So the deep well pump (vs. the one that pumps from the reservoir tanks out to the circle of houses that share the well) is out and can't be restarted right now. So I haven't had running water at my house for almost 48 hours and probably will not perhaps for another 24-48. This is more annoyance/inconvenience than horrible thing because a) YMCA membership so I have someplace to take my family to take showers no questions asked and without incurring extra costs, b) due to frequent windstorms that knock our power out I have a good supply of potable water and toilet-flushing water on hand in case of emergencies, and c) wonderful kind friends who allow me to avoid the laundromat (why do power outage things and well issues always happen on the day I'm planning to catchup on laundry so we're all down to our last pair of clean undies?) and do emergency loads at their house.

So really all things considered, it's kind of nice sometimes to have things like this happen to remind me of how much I'm fortunate!

Now here's to crossing my fingers that I have running water back by Wednesday so I can get my holiday baking done to take around to people!

And to be clear, I think house rules have a place on MUs. It's just that they tend to be implemented as knee jerk reactions to assholes then applied sort of to everyone else, rather than thoughtful and balancing things independent of reactionary stuff because of a big blow up--and thus very many times creating more problems than they solve..while not doing anything to eliminate the real problem.

This isn't always the case, but far too often "house rules" tend to be a reaction to one abusive person, rather than dealing with that person directly and swiftly.

More sadness than anger, but...letting go of my biz after a good 3 year run is pretty painful. It's the right decision and I don't regret it, but it was my one thing that was just mine. I will be able to do it again I think once my toddler is in first grade. But I'm feeling pretty down about it.

Thanks to the kind guidance of people here I was able to slip edgelord into a comment to one of my teens as they were trash talking with friends over Xbox. (Their headset is broken so it was just the room mic/speaker. ) so I got to hear silence for a few minutes and then an adolescent voice say "Whoa...was that your /mom/?!?"

Mission accomplished!