@Sandra@idiomdrottning.org

Sandra

@Sandra@idiomdrottning.org

Idiomdrottning demonstrates a new and often cleaner way to solve most systems problems. The system as a whole is likely to feel tantalizingly familiar to culture users but at the same time quite foreign.

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Sandra,

This is great, makes me happy to hear!

@flumph @dnd

Sandra, to random

If XHTML is all good and Textile/​RST/​Pandoc is all bad, then YAML is half bad. Like Textile and its ilk, I can’t easily write YAML without tools. But the good thing is that if I am looking at a YAML document, I can more or less understand the gist of what’s there.

https://idiomdrottning.org/yaml

Sandra, to random

A hundred and eighty bugs in one DSA?

https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2024/msg00066.html

What happened?

Sandra, to random

There is this whole “deep work” productivity culture obsession with hating on notifications, and when I do hyperfocus I often turn notifications off. That needs to be easy to do, and I do that all the time.

But there is a level of focus just before that depth, and it’s just as valuable, maybe even more valuable since it’s not as obsessive and not as neglectful of my well-being as a whole, and I can’t get there if I’m in check-check-checking hell.

https://idiomdrottning.org/notifications

Sandra,

@RogerBW

May I quote you on my blog? (I already did but I forgot to ask.)

Sandra,

Sweden has these. But I can't speak to how good or bad they are because I've never lived in one for more than a week or so at a time. I grew up out in the boonies.

As for the video, I like that it (unlike way too many of these video essays) doesn't bury the lede; he's up front about his perspective and then spend the rest of the video elaborating and explaining why. That's an oasis in the desert of "mysterious, let me hold you in suspense for the lede" style videos we see too many of. I get really distracted by his music, though. I can't fully listen to what he has to say since I get so into the heartbreakingly depressive synth pads.

@tree @breadtube

Sandra, to random

Not happy with issue trackers that has a ton of required boilerplate just to suggest an issue. Users (“lusers”) who are reporting bugs are helping the project and if it’s easy for them to contribute, more bugs will be found.

Non-mandatory boilerplate prompts (“here’s where you can find the version number”, “here’s where you can find logs”) are great but it should be possible to bypass since it’s stuff that’s not always relevant, like a user finding a bug can’t submit the admin’s logs for example.

I’ve said it before but probably the biggest culture shock when working in the corporate world was that they pay for testers and UI designers while when users give such suggestions for free in the FOSS world, they get kicked in the head.

The flipside to that is when the users are coming across as entitled, that’s not right either. Users, you’re not a paying customer or employee.

Sandra, to random

I don't want mandatory darkmode because I just can't see it very well especially when I'm tired. I can but only if I squint and like super focus, or zoom in. Here is a comparison image (above and below) but to me they're the same picture.

This is for LCD screens. On CRT it's the other way around and there I did use darkmode all the time. I dunno why.

Sandra, to random

We see something messed up and we fix it and we realize that others could benefit from the fix so we share it.

https://idiomdrottning.org/foss-maintenance

Sandra,

I think this is spot on and I overall dislike the game. One thing that I am a li’l bit interested in is the hitpoints system which seems like a good mix of Fate stressboxes with D&D damage.

The amount of incoming damage can go to certain thresholds and that has different consequences (both symbol-layer mechanical and diegetic). I think that’s neat and I’m glad to see that experiment carried further.

How much gold is in that hoard?

Wow, I had missed that. That’s not good. I mean, CR gets criticized for their “shopping episodes” (even though my own group is even more extreme in that regard) so maybe that’s to address that? Diaspora, for example, just has a “recourses” roll instead of detailed accounting of space credits, and it seems to work well in the context of that game.

How far does that bandit run?

I don’t think that’s a fair characterization; range bands is trued and tested tech. Cartesian spatialization is overkill for most game groups.

@Aielman15 @Shyfer

Sandra, to random

ADHD Productivity Fundamentals:

Remember why you are pursuing this.

Good rule when tweaking your system (or when considering whether to even tweaking your system; sometimes don’t mess with a good thing).

https://0xff.nu/adhd-productivity-fundamentals

Sandra,

Kudos to CR for listening to the backlash on this illconsidered project. They must've taken quite a hit 💸 but this was not a good idea. I mean, they have their fair share of bad sponsors like NordVPN or D&D Beyond but this was a li'l too much 🤷🏻‍♀️

@Ultragramps @criticalrole

Sandra,

They've also removed Talks Machina.

@Ultragramps @criticalrole

Sandra, to random

Thanks JBanana for finding this:

https://www.window-swap.com

etherdiver, to synths
@etherdiver@ravenation.club avatar

I would love for the good people of @synths (and anyone else who might see this, of course!) to go to my album Psychedelic Ghost Stories, select a single song based on the title, listen to it (or as much as your patience allows if it's not your bag), then report back if you think the title is a good fit for the music.

A simple "Listened to this song, good fit/bad fit" is fine, but you're very welcome to say more/offer details if you want.

Thanks in advance if you do

https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/album/psychedelic-ghost-stories

Sandra,

@etherdiver

Listened to "The Siren Call of the Benjolin Welcomes Me Home", bad fit. Feels more pushing than pulling, departing than arriving. Good song, good title, just bad fit. 🤷🏻‍♀️

@synths

Sandra, to random

It’s a curious accident of human nature that strawdoll tactics are so popular rhetorically since they are really, really bad for convincing people. They’re good at preaching to the choir and riling up the base, which is what contributes to their popularity; “manufacturing outrage”, but when people see through the strawdoll claims, that can undermine the credibility of your entire case and send them running right into the waiting arms of the other side, and when that other side truly is so much worse than yours, that’s a disaster.

People on the fence are especially vulnerable to this. They’ve seen some of the other side’s argument and now they come to hear you out. They see you saying things about the other side that doesn’t mesh with what they’ve heard, with how the other side has originally presented itself, and they conclude that you’re exaggerating or even lying, especially if that other side isn’t presenting itself that honestly.

https://idiomdrottning.org/strawdoll

Sandra, to random

I’ve got a lot of posts making fun of “dark matter” but that doesn’t make this new model any less terrifying:

our findings indicate that this expansion is due to the weakening forces of nature

God gets tired?!

https://www.earth.com/news/dark-matter-does-not-exist-universe-27-billion-years-old-study/

Sandra, to random

I disagree with many of these “things that don’t work” but number 12 is spot on:

Explaining board games. Here’s how people usually seem to teach board games:

  1. Someone spends 5-30 agonizing minutes explaining how the game works.
  2. No one understands anything.
  3. The game starts.
  4. As each game mechanic arises, people ask, “Hold on, how does it work?”
    You can skip to step 3.

https://dynomight.substack.com/p/things

(Also get off substack!)

Sandra,

@RogerBW

Ah I get so frustrated when trying to learn from something like that, and just wanna jump in. Step one requires me remembering a lot of things just from hearing and seeing them. It’s like “here memorize this half-an-hour TV episode or play”, I wouldn’t be able to do that.

One of my favorite games to explain is Star Wars Rebellion because I explain the goal, how the mission cards and leaders and troop movement works, and then I call the entire “refresh phase” as “just bookkeeping” and we’re off to playing this very complicated board game in just a few minutes 💁🏻‍♀️

I like to learn board games in two steps.

Step one please just start and walk us through step by step as we’re actually doing them. (Most people here say that they also need to hear an actual goal, wins and loss conditions, so for their sake that might be a good idea to add first.)

Then after that first game is over, that’s when I go scour the rulebooks and FAQs and all the nitty gritty crannies and “oh you explain this part wrong, actually the Harkonnens only get one bad when more than one spice meter go down” and stuff. That first teaching game is so essential for me to try to understand.

This isn’t meant to shut you down, please keep the convo going because I’m super curious about this topic, and your data on it from your job as a boardgame explainer. (I didn’t know that was your job, cool!) Just giving some more deets on my own experience with spacing out when people are trying to explain games 😭

@smorkin is the other way, he wants the explanation phase to be six times longer than normal because he’s also asking strategy questions, like “why would you ever wanna do that” whereas I’m much more “uh… it’s legal. I want it to be emergent whether or not it’s good to do it, I almost don’t even wanna know that before hand, I just said you’re allowed to do that.”

Sandra,

@RogerBW @smorkin

Yes, Star Wars Rebellion has that Learn To Play / Reference split (although I should download & print a fan-made reference that has Rise of the Empire baked in), I love that.
But it needs a good index. "Retreating, see Combat step such-and-such".
Don't they do that anymore?

Sandra,

@RogerBW @smorkin

About this part:

The problem with step by step for me is that you may need to make a decision up front which will significantly affect your play for the rest of the game, but you don’t yet know enough to make that decision.

The amount of “risk” each such rule has, risk of “missing hearing the rule messes up the game” is not binary, it’s gradual, right? And the more rules we hear, the higher the chance that a rule gets missed or forgotten in the flood.

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/14536/you-never-told-me-rule-rules-you-most-certainly-to

Sandra,

@RogerBW

I've played a couple of games of Ashes RotPb (non-reborn edition) and I don't even know what the rule you have in mind is 💁🏻‍♀️

Conversely, I've ranted and raved that Telegraphic Attack and Feinting Attack needs to be in GURPS Lite since the math breaks without them for even basic things, even GURPS Ultra-Lite's combat system could benefit from them. It should be baked into the core rules even for all contested rules: you can lower your opponents skill by one for each two you lower yours, or raise by two for each one you raise yours 🤷🏻‍♀️ (Or they should've used a linear die result distribution instead of bell curve.)

Sandra,

@RogerBW

Yeah, so seems we're on pretty much the same page how to explain games 💁🏻‍♀️
Filter out a lot of stuff and give a super zoomed out overview with heavy reliance on pregens 👍🏻

For meditation, I'd just say "You're allowed to discard cards to change dice" and let whether it's good or bad to do that be something that comes up in the game itself. I do it all the time 🤷🏻‍♀️ but only when it's worth it. That's a perfect example where some people would go "but why would you ever wanna do that?!" but I'm like can we please explain the rest of the rules first before my head falls off. It's like being underwater, I can't hold an overly long explanation in my head all at once; later when we're in the game that's when we can start to think of whether meditation is good or bad.

I might even hold off on saying that rule until the first round when the player rolls their first dice. The first two couple of rounds can be much more explanation laden because then we're actually doing things 🤷🏻‍♀️

tinyrabbit, to random
@tinyrabbit@floss.social avatar

I don’t know why Meta haven’t been public about this, but you can now hide any of your posts from Threads users by just adding the word ”pixelfed” anywhere in it. Nice to give the option to opt out so easily, but a somewhat strange way to do it and a very random choice of keyword imho.

Sandra,

@tinyrabbit

(Explaining the joke to peeps who're out of the loop:

Meta is censoring their competition, Pixelfed, an instagram-like fediverse site.

Not sure if it's really happening:

Various people have tried to recreate the same situation with their Threads accounts, and their comments are still publicly available

https://wedistribute.org/2024/03/is-threads-hiding-pixelfed/ )

Sandra,

What I did was use tokens for inspiration and saying "you can have as many as you want and then cash in all of them to get advantage". That worked well.

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