southsamurai

southsamurai, 4 days ago

Eh, it isn’t all the time for most people, and it isn’t hard to shut down for most people either.

The key is that it isn’t a separate entity, it’s just your own mind using words to ideate. Like, you can see the sky and just enjoy the blue, or you can think about the blue in words, if you have that inner voice. People without that voice still have a way of processing and thinking, it just isn’t in words, it’s more abstract.

The few people I’ve met that don’t think in words do seem to have difficulty in expressing the experience to others though.

southsamurai, 4 days ago

No, no, you misunderstood. It’s kill the Buddha

southsamurai, 4 days ago

I think the key is to use it as one aspect of the world, not the entirety.

It sucks, but humans in the real world are very prone to xenophobia against other humans, and it can be about some pretty dumb characteristics. But not everyone does it. Any time you might have a despot enforcing their prejudice, there’s a resistance to it in some part of the population.

Now, it is perfectly fine to just not have it be in your game. Ttrpg play is largely escapist, so you can just leave things out. You can even forego the usual dwarf/elf antithesis if you want.

The second part follows the first. You either use that kind of tactic as part of your world to make it realistic, or you keep it escapist and use only the more broad “evil” of the bbeg being power hungry. I don’t think you can use terror tactics like zersetzung in a morally ambiguous way at all though. It’s an act that is inherently harmful to people and society; the exact situation you’re using to describe it is proof of that. You’ll never be able to use those tactics and not be considered bad later on, so a bbeg using them is definitely unambiguous.

southsamurai, 4 days ago

Oh, I fully support his belief in saying what he thinks.

It’s always good to know where the morons are so you can avoid them.

southsamurai, 4 days ago

Only after they destroy the right to arms.

Seriously, people need to start looking back at the last big labor movement in the US and how ugly it got. And it didn’t get ugly because workers started violence. But it only ended once workers fought back hard.

southsamurai, 4 days ago

Nah, people remember, it was just not that great at breaking hetero stereotypes. It just shifted them to being pretty while still thinking the same way. It was a step for sure, but not really a big one.

What really helped break through the bullshit was gay men coming out and living life. When men started seeing the vast array of masculinity in that community, it allowed new discourse about what masculinity is, outside of the old patriarchal paradigm.

You started seeing more men embrace their self and express it fully. The discussion about being free to express emotions, to be a nuturing man, to be gentle and kind and open with everyone started becoming a possibility instead of a weakness. And nobody had to give up anything to have that freedom. It’s still perfectly fine to be traditionally masculine if that’s who you are, as long as you aren’t trying to define others.

From there, we all got to expand our personal definition of masculine for ourselves. And, as we move into a paradigm where everyone can just be who they are, without any need to label themselves if they don’t want to, we will be able to pick and choose even more. We can explore the fullness of human experience in a way I don’t think has ever been possible. And that is largely thanks to our trans and non binary friends and neighbors stepping up and living their lives without apology.

Hell, if you ask me, the first step was back with the hippies and their long hair. Then the metalheads picking up that baton and running with it through the eighties until that one barrier to looking like a man was gone and likely gone for good. Those guys at the end of the boomer generation looking to escape the trap patriarchy had set for them took the first public step by growing their hair out and still being men, being comfortable with it.

It takes time to shift perceptions. It takes people at the edges being willing to step forward and be the change.

southsamurai, 4 days ago

The fuck are you smoking? This is in the wrong community, and I think you know that

southsamurai, 4 days ago

Drugs and a van.

southsamurai, 5 days ago

Luckily, once you push enough people hard enough, you end up with an angry army. Look back at the history of anti union efforts and how many ended up with the workers striking in multiple uses of the word.

southsamurai, 5 days ago

No thanks

southsamurai, 5 days ago

I hate to be that guy, but it’s an optional thing. Voluntary analytics are fine. You opt in/out, and that’s the way it should be.

Seriously, it’s about choice. It’s not about there never, ever being any information sent back.

southsamurai, 4 days ago

Being real here? Anyone that can’t see the damn button for it during initial setup isn’t going to give a damn.

Best practices? No. Opt in only should be the default. But that’s still about choice, not whether or not telemetry is inherently a bad thing. But if someone is too damn lazy to look at the settings of a program when they first use it, that’s pretty damn stupid. But, hey, people in general are stupid.

southsamurai, 4 days ago

All music without lyrics/singing is background music.

southsamurai, 4 days ago

The fact that it is possible to hear the difference even when written is amazing :)

southsamurai, 4 days ago

Yeah, the original “300” was flawed. Not solely because of the percentages, but because of the amount of iron itself you can get out of blood being over estimated by a factor of about 10. Somebody actually did an experiment to find out how much iron you can get from blood, there used to be a video on YouTube of it, and the amounts were way less than the original 300 estimate.

southsamurai, 4 days ago

Everything in that image is a delight to the mouth when cooked well.

Brussels sprouts, you roast those little green balls and they turn into a slightly sweet, wonderfully deep and complex flavor bomb. Add a light drizzle of balsamic, your mouth and brain will orgasm.

Hell, you can roast any of them and end up with great taste, though the leafy ones can get over cooked really easy that way compared to a nice braise or saute.

southsamurai, 4 days ago

Then you’re doing end of life care the slow way.

southsamurai, 4 days ago

It’s why my favorite way to troll the usual “why isn’t everyone on metric” goombahs is to tell them they’re just too lazy and/or dumb to do math with fractions.

southsamurai, 4 days ago

It isn’t actually harder. At all. People just think it is because them funny / signs is different from regular math. So they get put off by it even if they’re actually good at it because they’ve built the idea of hating fractions even though it’s a very intuitive thing.

You take a string, fold it in half, you’ve got a fraction in front of you. The rest follows from that basic principle. But when you put it on paper, the only thing that isn’t obvious is dividing fractions. Even then, you could figure it out on your own with a bit of thought.

Unfortunately, you jam a bunch of kids in a room and make them do boring things, often being taught by someone that isn’t actually good at math, and may have no desire to teach math in the first place, and you get droves of kids that hate math. Someone that likes math, and has spent time playing with it, they’ll have a way of translating it into different terms. Instead, you go by the book regardless of if the book works for kids of a given age.

Fractions are just as easy as decimal. You can’t imagine how many kids struggle with division in decimals, or even just keeping the number line in mind when dealing with them.

The one belt benefit decimal has over fractions is the ability to write things out by line and do most problems (other than division) in a simple box. That goes away once you’re dividing though. Dividing fractions is easier for some.

Also, fractions are easier to estimate with. You can almost always guesstimate what half of a thing will be, so you can almost always keep going until the fraction is too small visually to detect. Eyeballing a tenth of something is not as easy for most people.

Besides, it’s good for your brain. It’s like a muscle in that regard. If you don’t use it, it gets flabby. Flabby brains lead to shitty thinking.

southsamurai, 5 days ago

Is that a thing?

I gave up drinking soda on anything resembling a regular basis damn near twenty years ago, and I’ve never once had anyone act strange when I’ve asked for water over other beverages.

At most, I’ll get a “you sure?” and a yes to that means I get me some nice, cold water.

Only time I’ve had anyone object it was because their water quality was bad. It was a temporary thing, and they apologized for it.

Don’t get me wrong I do drink other things, but I prefer water in almost all circumstances where I’d be having ice in a beverage anyway because most ice is made from the same water supply. Whatever taste it may have would be in anything else like soda anger anyway.

southsamurai, 5 days ago

Pseudonyms are fairly common.

If you go with traditional publishing, your agent can help you get going.

If you self publish, it can be trickier, but the major outlets are fine with a pen name for public use and inky using your real info for the back end. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc, they all are easy to deal with in that regard.

But if you’re trying to do all of your own distribution and payment, you’d likely want to talk to a good cpa or attorney about how to set things up so you don’t fuck up taxes and whatnot, while still being publicly unnamed under your real ID.

Fwiw, unless you’re also pretty good at marketing, monetizing isn’t easy. It’s one thing to have your stuff out there, and another entirely to have people know it exists, and then spend money on it.

southsamurai, 5 days ago

Only reason I’d say no is that it looks like shit sauce and shit crust. I’d still try it, but it wouldn’t be a good pizza in the first place, so I wouldn’t consider it to be a definitive example of what kiwi on pizza would be.

southsamurai, 5 days ago

No vampires.

Creepy? That’s a matter of perception.

Good? Again, that’s a personal thing.

As erotica, they’re kinda too over the top for most people. The whole thing is extreme bdsm. Extreme as in doing things that would be very dangerous or at least risky in real life. But it is fantasy, so as long as you go into them with that in mind, it’s not really any more extreme than some porn that’s out there.

What I can say for sure is that her style of writing lends itself well to erotica in general, even if some of the specifics of her attempts in that general heading fall short of being actually arousing. In other words, it’s very readable, if you like the way she writes at all.

By that I mean her style, not necessarily her plots or dialogue. Like, her vampire books jumped jumped the shark decades ago, but the style of them is consistent even when a given book is not a good read. I personally like her rather distinct southern gothic vibe in her word choices, pacing, and description of scenes. Her writing drawls like a lady in her garden during a sultry late summer evening, offering iced tea to a guest.

Even when she’s writing action, there’s a sense of langour to it all.

And that zoomed applies to the beauty books as well as her “exit to eden” stand alone quasi erotic novel. I think e2e is more erotic in how it handles bdsm themes and scenes, but it’s also not a fantasy/fairy tale story. There’s a scene in e2e where one character is using butter and cinnamon in an erotic manner, and it actually works as erotica. The way she writes that scene is languid and dripping.

My overall take? The beauty books are worth a read even if only as an experience more than a read for pleasure. It’s a very interesting thing beyond its value as an erotic piece.