News:

My opinion > Your opinion

Main Menu
Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Messages - Cainad (dec.)

#62
Or Kill Me / Re: Short rant on CLIMATE CHANGE.
February 26, 2018, 06:21:32 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 10, 2018, 02:07:31 AM
Update:  In 2013, Canadian Prime Minister Harper destroyed the fisheries libraries containing meteorological data going back to 1850 (including, I might add, my father's work from the 1970s).

Because if you have no historical data, you cannot observe rate of change.

FUCK
#63
I spun this off from the Corpus Callosum thread, but here's why it made me think of it:

If you are only one neuron in the societal "brain," I'm not sure you can really be on one hemisphere AND be part of the corpus callosum. I'm not sure it's possible to be both the bridge and the destination, in other words.

But other people CAN be the bridge. If you separate yourself from them by being a wingnut, you lose access to the bridge.
#64
Quote from: Cramulus on February 26, 2018, 04:53:27 PM
lemme crunch this a little bit - is this your position?

that basically, it's easiest to affect the people nearby you (people with slightly different opinions), and that by moving enough of them, they can act as a larger gravitational center which pulls in people from further away?

Yes, I think that's a fair distillation of the idea.
#65
Also uhhhh good job everyone on... not dying? Apparently there's been some near misses. Yikes.
#66
Quote from: Cain on February 09, 2018, 04:07:38 AM
So, the co-worker who broke into my flat apologised to me today.

I think my reaction is best summed up by this smiley:  :kingmeh:

King Meh remains my single greatest contribution to PD.com. I think it's telling that the freeware pixel art program I used to make it borked forever shortly after. It's work in this world was complete.

Also, 'sup Pee Dee. It appears that the forum is no longer nannywalled off at work.
#67
I've been workshopping an idea that I'm tentatively calling the magnet theory of social change (maybe better to call it the gravity theory, but it's a metaphor anyway so fuck it). The idea is that each of us has some amount of "magnetic" pull on our peers, as part of a greater social system.*

The society overall can be seen as a field of little magnets on a flat surface. Since politics is the subject of interest, you can imagine this flat surface has the Left-Right/Authoritarian-Libertarian political axes on it, or whatever axes you consider relevant at the moment. This spread also serves as a visualization of the Overton Window.

If you are super gung-ho about your views and pull yourself far to one side, you may be able to pull some number of people along with you, depending on your charisma and persuasiveness. But your pull on the overall field of magnets, on society generally, is dramatically lessened with distance. Likewise, if you become estranged from the pull of the larger society, you cease to care or be influenced by what the bulk of society cares about, as their magnetic pull on you has lessened. This is probably not a desirable place to be, unless you're into being a hermit or charismatic cult leader.

BUT

You can still move in the direction you want while maintaining your magnetic pull on those near you (in meatspace or headspace). Ways to do this include:

- Being chill and not being hard to talk to ("Don't get him started on capitalism, you'll never hear the end of it")
- Being rich and powerful so people are motivated to follow you

so yeah mainly just the first one is an option for most of us

What this DOESN'T necessarily include is reaching out to people who are on the far side of the society from you. This may be necessary if the opposition is (a) so intractable that it takes an unreasonable amount of energy for you to engage them, or (b) their preferred tactic is to feign reasonableness and waste your time with rhetorical games. Ideally, the magnet theory relies on the strength of the bulk of society pulling most people away from the ideas that suck ass, and allowing the fringe to be the fringe.

The more I think about it, the more this probably should be the gravity theory rather than the magnet theory. It's sort of an evolution of BIP "cog in the machine" thinking, which asked that you change yourself only so far as to effect change on your immediate surroundings, rather than futile grand schemes.



* This hinges on the general reality tunnel (which I've been using lately) that humans are a generally communal, cooperative species with occasional clashes of interest that take up a lot of our energy. This does not work if your reality tunnel mainly views humans as individual agents who are generally in conflict and only occasionally cooperate (a la Ayn Rand hyper-individualism).
#68
I've been thinking about what it means to "reach out" to "the other side" (whatever that means, although in the current context I'm thinking about American political life) and what fruits that can bear, if any.

Contemporary wisdom always favors moderation, and extolls the virtue of compromise. Taking a firm stance is almost always seen as poor marketing at best and fanaticism at worst. Is this always the case?

What if you believe you have truly made a good-faith effort to understand your opposition's position, and came to the conclusion that their way just plain sucks? What is your recourse to something better?
#69
RPG Ghetto / Re: Unified Vidya Games thread
January 28, 2018, 01:43:55 AM
Vidya Gaem shit I am paying attention to:

Dark Souls 1 is getting a remaster. Now maybe we can have a proper PC port that doesn't require a mod to run adequately.

Assassin's Creed: Origins is the first AssCreed game I've played since the original and it's the tits. Highly enjoyable.

Wolfenstein: The New Colossus is honestly kinda hard as shit and I had to set the difficulty down like the weakling coward I am, but BOY OH BOY does the game go hard with its story. Like, I'm genuinely impressed with how much balls they had with this writing, and they mostly pull it off.

Monster Hunter World had its beta on PS4 a while back, and it was the first Monster Hunter game I've ever touched. Apparently MonHun has a dizzying, intimidating amount of systems and equipment that are involved, but all I know is that I shot bees at a hippopotamus made of rocks and then pole-vaulted onto its back and rode it like a rodeo bull. So uh, best video game ever, basically. Very sad that the PC release is not until Fall.
#70
Quote from: Doktor Howl on November 30, 2017, 05:10:09 AM
Quote from: Cainad (dec.) on July 20, 2013, 05:25:49 PM
While your proposal is creative, we regret to inform you that our company will be unable to assist you in your "topograhical reassignment" of the greater Washington DC area. Your proposed designs to use our drilling and hydrofracturing technologies to create a series of small-scale earthquakes that would spell out the entire First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in the form of miniature mountain ranges is, unfortunately, not in line with our company's mission.

We should point out that, if we are reading your charts correctly, your plans require exploiting fault zones that are deeper than any such faults that have been mapped previously. As we do not have access to, nor have ever heard of, the proposed "HIMEOBS-grade drilling apparatus" you refer to on page 13, we could not reach these fault zones even if we were assured of their presence.

Additionally, we have found no records of the credentials, or even the existence, of your recommended "on-site supervisory experts." We have been unable to locate the people you refer to on page 24 as "Signor Richtedor" and "ECH Consulting, LLC."

In summary, we are sorry that we cannot help you in achieving your goals. We wish you the best of luck in all future endeavors.

Sincerely,
TerraTech Industries, Inc.

Dear Corporate Swine,

I just now received this in the mail.  It was soggy and hard to read, which is probably because I piss in the mailbox before opening it, to defuse bombs sent by my admirers.

In any case, I assure you that there is no such thing as "HIMEOBS-grade" boring tools.  That part of the request was probably caused by my ungrateful children putting LSD in my breakfast cereal again.  Mind you, this was back when I could eat REAL FOOD, and was more easily fooled.

In any case, I have decided that the country doesn't need the first amendment.  They have come right out and said so.  Instead, I'd like to frack in Beverly Hills.  Send me a quote.

Sincerely,
Martin Bormann

Dear Mr Bormann,

There has been some restructuring of things here at The Company since last we spoke. In fact, I am very glad indeed to have the opportunity to touch base with you, as there were clearly some missed opportunities that we would like to make good on. Can't leave "money on the table," as they say. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Please be aware that our corporate entity has since merged with and joined The Good FolksTM and will be glad to receive your future proposals. We will consider everything that crosses our desk. Nothing is out of scope, and if it is out of scope, we will Find The Money anyway.

Sincerely,
Inc.
"Service so good, you won't even remember your teeth."
#71
Quote from: Cain on December 11, 2017, 04:19:22 AM
Quote from: Cain on August 25, 2016, 12:56:05 PM
Well, at least Sorweel should come out of things OK.  Unless he literally runs into the No-God or goes on to kill Kelhus, that boy's unstoppable.

Well that was fucking prophetic.

:lulz: Fucking hell.
#72
Khellus grasped the Gnosis, literally a knowing of the Divine. He assumed it could all fall within the scope of the Logos, that the Dunyain were not fundamentally wrong about Cause and Effect, merely lacking the necessary knowledge to grasp it in totality. He worked on the assumption that the Outside could be manipulated by intellect, the same way that the World could be. That the Outside could be made to "walk Conditioned ground," as they say. But I think that in gaining the perspective of the Gods, he gained their very same blindness: he couldn't perceive the No-God.

Up until the end I had assumed that Kelmomas and his dickery was the work of Ajokli. Oops.

I read the first book back in high school, I think the same year it was published. 2005-ish? I'm 27 now. R.S. Bakker is a sonovabitch and I think I love him.
#73
Quote from: Cain on October 04, 2017, 12:01:52 AM
No problem.  In that case....

WHAT

THE

FUCK

JUST

HAPPENED

Everything fell logically into place, as far as I can see.  It all makes a terrifying amount of sense, the end of The Unholy Consult.  That the Consult would take Dunyain alive was incredibly foolish, but once they did, it sealed their own fate.  The tekne and the Dunyain philosophy are too close...that's assuming the Mutiliated are still Dunyain, and not Shaeonara possessing them. 

Proyas was being set-up all along.  He was the scapegoat, the fall-man designed to take the blame for the decision to eat Sranc.  His breaking was necessary, to make that step possible, and once it was done, he served the purpose of dying to redeem the Great Ordeal.

Kellhus was trying to save the world, and his plan was actually quite brilliant.  The gods could not see the threat, so he used the daimos to travel to the Outside, and made pacts with the pit.  Ajokli's summoning at the topos that is Golgotterath completely negated the advantages of the Consult and their chorae-armed skin spies, and is one of the most chilling scenes in a series full of them.

And then, Kelmomnas ruins it all, as he ruins everything.  Of course he's the No God.  No wonder the Narindar couldn't see him, couldn't react to him.  Once he was on the path to becoming the No-God, he was always the No-God, and so always invisible to the Hundred.  Ajokli intended to use the Consult as the lash to drive nations to despair, but he very conveniently abandons Kellhus at a key moment (very conveniently indeed, considering he cannot see the No-God).  Whether Kellhus had a contingency for this it's hard to say, but at the very least he is now a Ciphrang in the Outside, which means his part may not be over just yet.  And then of course, Ajokli is now also loose in the world, in the body of Cnauir, which makes a terrifying amount of sense.

Finished. The appendices tricked me into thinking I had farther to go than I did.

So, in conclusion


Um.


what?


So What Comes After always did rule What Comes Before. But if Mog-Pharau does its work and the goal of Ark/The Consult is realized, then that will cease to be true once the World is shut against the Outside... I think?
#74
Quote from: Cain on September 01, 2017, 08:02:14 AM
Cainad, have you finished TUC yet?  Because I want to drop spoilers.

Whoops, missed this!

No, I haven't finished but I can easily avoid this thread until I do. Spoil away!
#75
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on July 23, 2017, 01:54:03 AM
Trying to convince my band to change our name to Mog-Pharau

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

I once generated a Minecraft map using "Mog-Pharau" as the seed string. It generated a giant ocean, with nothing except a half-dozen small mushroom-covered islands scattered about in the emptiness.

Bakker scores points in my fantasy trope book for totally nailing the "Blessed With Suck" trope for the Nonmen. Immortality blows ASS, and the full extent of how much ass it blows gets loads of detail in The Great Ordeal.