DND is tricky to recommend. On the one hand, as far as RPGs go it’s mega popular. On the other, it’s a very specific kind of game and rather finicky.

Many people who don’t want to play fantasy dungeon crawling tactical combat would enjoy other genres, but finding those groups can be harder. One of my friends has no real interest in fantasy, but immediately was like “LET’S DO IT” when I mentioned a game of Vampire.

The tabletop game meetup I know of (in New York) is explicitly friendly to new players. One of the hosts said their first game ever was at the meetup many years ago.

One of the reasons I prefer playing on PC over other platforms is there’s usually fan made mods / cheats. Like, yeah, I could do something really tedious for four hours, or I could get a mod to skip it. This is my leisure activity, not an exam.

I try to be mindful that too much cheating can water down the experience. Like, if I was playing BG3 and just set everyone to max level from the start, I would probably have less fun, personally. But if someone just wants to do the story and have fun with exploding barrels? Not for me to judge.

(I do draw the line at multiplayer. Cheating against other people is rude as heck. )

Yeah. Often when I talk to people who say they “don’t have time” I wonder where their time is going. Often to watching TV. Sometimes podcasts. Social media is a big time suck.

But like if you have time to watch all of the office again this year, you had time to play video games.

A friend of mine realized they were just losing hours a day to Instagram. Delete that, and you have time for better hobbies. Play a game. Read a book.

Having children seems like a bigger factor. The only couple I know that has kids still has time. One spends it on DND, and other on TV and simple phone games.

Oh I remember this post. I remember being surprised to see The Courtneys on the list. They’re a fun band. Did a nice live show when I saw them, once.

Unknown Armies is kind of like this. Most magic requires obsession, and you don’t get a lot of well adjusted, friendly, people who also, say, collects all many of coin and money (money is power) but won’t spend any (that’s giving away your power!)

There’s a bunch of schools of magic but they’re all built on an obsession and paradox. The book is really well written, too. (At least 2e is. I didn’t spend much time with 3e)

Right, humans are bad about that kind of thing. I think it has to do with Dunbar’s number? The monkeysphere? It’s hard for us to model a lot of people as full people in our head, especially as they’re more removed from us.

Like you probably don’t really think about the garbage man as a fully fleshed out guy with hopes, dreams, a favorite band, a love that got away, and all that. When you have some absolutely rancid trash, you probably just throw it in the can and forget about it. But if it was your mother or best friend that was going to have to deal with it, maybe you’d be more careful. Wouldn’t want the bag to rip and spray maggots all over Mom.

That’s fine. That’s all of us.

But I think there’s degrees. Shades. Like you mentioned cell phones. Most of us accept the out of sight horrors that go with them. But, like, some people are absolute assholes to wait staff. Just treat the waiter like shit, are rude to the coffee shop people, whatever. I think most of us recognize that as bad.

Somewhere between those two points I think is “I’m going to build software to spy on people”. Personally, I think that should be ok the far side of the line. The not okay side. Why? A bit of self preservation, a bit of ethics, and a helping of “I don’t want to contribute to bad things happening to people, even ones I don’t know”.

This post is getting long. I think you’re right that it’s not as simple as “doesn’t care about other people” but I think that’s a factor.

The original or the remake? I think the original is more solid overall, but the remake has some fun stuff.

Did you know in the original, you can get more than one support effect on a spell if you have more than one copy? I only learned this like last year, despite playing the game when it was new. So you can do like

[ Ultima + MP Absorb ] [ Ultima + HP Absorb ] [ Ultima + Quad Magic ] in your armor, and when you cast ultima it’ll Absorb HP, MP, and cast four times.

Also that will freeze the game on the 2nd to last boss.

You know how scam emails intentionally include mistakes because they want to filter out smart people? Same idea.

Reasonably smart people will see this and go “this is garbage”. The idiots will go deeper, and become loyal gop voters.

Single use plastic should he illegal for most things. Yes, it might be inconvenient to have to carry your own thermos or whatever, but filling the ocean with plastic is worse than inconvenient

He was a pretty smart guy, so I’m pretty sure he understood the ramifications. This isn’t like a plumber working in a building that happens to house an evil company. This was directly working as a high ranking software developer at a shitty software company.

Palantir is pretty awful. I knew a guy who took a job there, a bunch of years ago. When he said where he was going, I asked “But what if they work on something really shitty? Like spying on people?”. He was like, “Meh”, with a big shrug.

He was friendly and kind to the people around him, but I guess he just didn’t care about anyone he didn’t know personally right now.

I believe so. Otherwise you’re testing memory as well, which would make the results very confounded.

I can’t find the one I did, but https://www.varsitytutors.com/6th_grade_reading-comprehension-problem-440865 seems free.

https://www.k12reader.com/subject/reading-skills/reading-comprehension/6th-grade-reading-comprehension/ also came up.

I’ve already posted this a few times, but Ed Zitron wrote a long article about what he calls “Business Idiots”. Basically, people in decision making positions who are out of touch with their users and their products. They make bad decisions, and that’s a big factor in why everything kind of sucks now.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/ (it’s long)

I think a lot of us have this illusion that higher ranking people are smarter, more visionary, or whatever. But I think no. I think a lot of people are just kind of stupid, surrounded by other stupid people, cushioned from real, personal, consequences. On top of that, for many enterprises, the incentives don’t line up with the users. At least wikipedia isn’t profit driven, but you can probably think of some things you’ve used that got more annoying with updates. Like google putting more ads up top, or any website that does a redesign that yields more ad space, worse navigation.

I’m so tired of “AI”. I’m tired of people who don’t understand it expecting it to be magical and error free. I’m tired of grifters trying to sell it like snake oil. I’m tired of capitalist assholes drooling over the idea of firing all that pesky labor and replacing them with machines. (You can be twice as productive with AI! But you will neither get paid twice as much nor work half as many hours. I’ll keep all the gains.). I’m tired of the industrial scale theft that apologists want to give a pass to while individuals who torrent can still get in trouble, and libraries are chronically under funded.

It’s just all bad, and I’m so tired of feeling like so many people are just not getting it.

I hope wikipedia never adopts this stupid AI Summary project.

Its kind of pithy but like we still live in a capitalist hellscape, so have any resistances really been successful?

despite a decade of experience, I can’t even get to the first round of interviews.

I’ve had several places reject me without even a phone screen. My last job was the same role, the same tech stack, and I achieved the things they wrote about in the blurb. I just get back “we’re looking for someone more aligned with our needs”.

What needs?? I check every box you put on the post!

My friend thinks the jobs don’t exist, and they’re just posted so the company looks good. Or they’re some other fraud.

I think that happens, but also there’s incompetence in the funnel. Recruiters can’t read, ai sucks, blah blah blah.

I think 6th grade is reading for plot. Just a basic plot with a few characters. No complex themes. No unreliable narrators. Limited vocabulary.

I found an online test for it somewhere and it was like

“Sally was born in Canada and lived there until she moved to the United States when she was thirteen. She spends summers in Canada with her aunt and uncle, but spends the rest of the year in Boston. This year, she’s graduating from high school and planning on attending college. She wants to see more of the country, so her top picks for college are in California and Chicago.”

“Where does Sally live during the winter?”

“Where did Sally spend her childhood?”

“Where do Sally’s aunt and uncle live?”

You’re not going to find as many people who read badly on a majority text platform like this.

I can’t speak for everyone, but for me, in my youth, it helped to actually go out and do the things I was worried about. When I spent all my time home worrying, I just got worse. Once I left the house, went to the party, went on the hike, whatever, I found the reality wasn’t anywhere near what I had worried about

Just remember that good relationships never end in breakups.

lol what. I’ve had several relationships that were good, and then we broke up. We’re still friends, but it became apparent that we were no longer good for each other as partners. People grow and change. That doesn’t invalidate the time we spent together.