TheRtRevKaiser's recent activity
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Comment on Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew | Official trailer in ~movies
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Comment on Exploring Appendix N in ~games.tabletop
TheRtRevKaiser LinkI've read a decent number of these over the years just by virtue of being into SFF, although there are plenty on the list that I haven't tried. Zelazny is a standout for me - I loved the Amber...I've read a decent number of these over the years just by virtue of being into SFF, although there are plenty on the list that I haven't tried.
Zelazny is a standout for me - I loved the Amber books (enough that I moderated the fan subreddit for years) and his other works are generally very well regarded. There are elements that haven't aged great, but I find that to be true for a lot of older SFF.
Moorcock is a tough read - there's some cool stuff there but the prose is generally pretty tiresome for me.
Tolkien is an obvious elephant in the room here as well, I think Sir Terry Pratchett summed up Tolkien's influence in the genre best:
"J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means that the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt. Fuji."
I've also read a decent amount of Vance's Dying Earth stories which are definitely of their time, but still interesting enough to pick up and reach imo. You can absolutely see their influence on early D&D in a big way.
I've read a bit of Burroughs and Howard, which IMO haven't aged great but have good bones. I've heard that Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stuff has aged better, but I've never gotten around to reading any of them.
I guess to sum up - there's a lot of classic SFF stuff in Appendix N. Some of it has stood the test of time, some of it has aged poorly but is still worth reading, some of it has aged very poorly, and honestly some of it wasn't that good when it was written, lol.
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Comment on Donald Trump admin using AI to deny medical care for US seniors in disastrous experiment in ~society
TheRtRevKaiser Link ParentYeah I edited my comment to try and clarify a bit because I felt like I was arguing without really even disagreeing with you. The way the healthcare system (if you can call it that) in the US...Yeah I edited my comment to try and clarify a bit because I felt like I was arguing without really even disagreeing with you. The way the healthcare system (if you can call it that) in the US works is already an absolute dumpster fire without adding AI hallucinations into the mix.
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Comment on Donald Trump admin using AI to deny medical care for US seniors in disastrous experiment in ~society
TheRtRevKaiser (edited )Link ParentHmmm. The evidence presented in this article is pretty scant as well. I'm not saying it's not happening, and if it is it's entirely inappropriate, but to me it sounds like a pretty typical case of...Hmmm. The evidence presented in this article is pretty scant as well. I'm not saying it's not happening, and if it is it's entirely inappropriate, but to me it sounds like a pretty typical case of low bidding vendors cheaping out and building shit rules engines, and not hiring enough (or competent enough) staff to handle the volume of requests.
I tend to think that prior-authorization is a pretty shit practice in general when it comes to health coverage, personally. I recognize that provider fraud, upcoding, etc are very real issues but I think in general post-payment auditing is a more humane way of handling it that doesn't deny or delay healthcare recommended by the providers who are closest to the patient. I think the focus on AI in these headlines is distracting from a practice that is just designed to make healthcare worse and put more of a burden on providers and patients while lining the pockets of middle-men.
EDIT: I just want to be clear that I'm not just trying to be argumentative here. If these companies are using AI in PA or Claims review is absolutely needs to be found out and stopped unless there are very robust safeguards and testing on the type and capability of the models/systems being used - specifically trained machine learning models might be better than a human reviewer, but there needs to be a human in the loop and those systems need to be rigorously tested. And a general purpose LLM should absolutely not be used for decision making in healthcare. That said, I think the real problem here is that the profit motive is so deeply embedded in every level of american healthcare. I would argue that pretty much every corner of US healthcare is bloated, inefficient, rent-seeking, and inhumane. I know that providers are generally trying their best but the deck is stacked against them and the burden of dealing with all of the middlemen means they have to spend ungodly amounts of time and money just to be able to stay afloat. I work in this industry and I would be happy if the whole industry became irrelevant tomorrow.
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Comment on Donald Trump admin using AI to deny medical care for US seniors in disastrous experiment in ~society
TheRtRevKaiser LinkSo the article mentions AI in the headline and the first paragraph, but there's no specific mention anywhere else in the article of these vendors using AI for assessing PAs - I'd love to know if...So the article mentions AI in the headline and the first paragraph, but there's no specific mention anywhere else in the article of these vendors using AI for assessing PAs - I'd love to know if there's more information out there about this aspect of the issue. Instead, what's described sounds more like a pretty typical rules-based process, and it sounds to me like the bigger issue is that the payment structure for these vendors incentivizes them to deny as many PA requests as they can get away with. On top of that, these types of vendors will almost never hire adequate staff to deal with support needs in a timely manner, because that cuts into their profitability, so if the gov't doesn't have robust SLAs and meaningful financial penalties attached to them, then the experience of trying to get issues resolved is going to be an absolute nightmare.
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Comment on Brad Pitt returning for ‘World War Z’ sequel at Paramount with Edward Berger to direct in ~movies
TheRtRevKaiser Link ParentYeah the book would have lent itself really well to an anthology seriesYeah the book would have lent itself really well to an anthology series
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Comment on Waving goodbye, carrying my bundle on a stick in ~talk
TheRtRevKaiser Link ParentI think this is also part of why the requested features have retreated from "please more robust moderation" years ago to "please let me block certain people" or "a way for the community to label...I think this is also part of why the requested features have retreated from "please more robust moderation" years ago to "please let me block certain people" or "a way for the community to label frustrating behavior". Even if others think that those particular feature requests might cause more problems than they solve, or not solve the problem in the first place, the fact that they're being asked for probably means that there's a real felt need. And I've been here long enough to know that this is definitely not the first time that this conversation has been had.
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Comment on Luigi Mangione pleads guilty to federal stalking charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO in ~news
TheRtRevKaiser Link ParentI think people have a general sense that many of the systems that exist in our culture are harmful and extractive, but they don't see any way to make things better and they may not even understand...I think people have a general sense that many of the systems that exist in our culture are harmful and extractive, but they don't see any way to make things better and they may not even understand what is wrong or what it is that they feel (which is why scapegoating groups like immigrants is effective). People are frustrated that corporations are permitted to make decisions that prioritize profit over human life and I think the Mangione case was cathartic for some because of that feeling of powerlessness.
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Comment on Is Flowers for Algernon sci-fi? in ~books
TheRtRevKaiser Link ParentYeah I think you hit the nail on the head here, sci-fi is just a really big umbrella. I think of it a little like Metal music. If somebody tells you they're into metal that really gives you so...Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head here, sci-fi is just a really big umbrella. I think of it a little like Metal music. If somebody tells you they're into metal that really gives you so little info about what they really like except that it probably has a guitar (probably). Like, Metalcore, Black Metal, and, like, Grindcore really aren't gonna appeal to the same people necessarily, and that's fine. I find the stuff that I vibe with, try to branch out and find things to appreciate about other subgenres, but it's okay if it's not for me if somebody's getting something out of it. That doesn't make it "not metal" or anything.
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Comment on Is Flowers for Algernon sci-fi? in ~books
TheRtRevKaiser LinkI think Flowers for Algernon is a type of sci-fi that doesn't get as much attention in recent times as it used to - where the "sci-fi" aspect is mostly just a catalyst or a useful hand-wave for...I think Flowers for Algernon is a type of sci-fi that doesn't get as much attention in recent times as it used to - where the "sci-fi" aspect is mostly just a catalyst or a useful hand-wave for something specific the author wants to explore, but not really the focus itself. Like, Fahrenheit 451 and Nineteen Eighty-four are both technically (dystopian) Sci-fi, but really any sci-fi elements are set dressing or are used as a way to get at the social commentary the author wanted to make. I think this is probably the real difference between "soft" and "hard" sci-fi - in "hard" sci-fi the technological or scientific aspect is a focal point, and the author wants to examine what the world or society would look like if x was true. In "soft" sci-fi, I think, the author has a story they want to tell and the technology is just a plot device to enable telling that story. Personally I don't think one is "more sci-fi" than the other, but I do think they're differently sci-fi, or maybe different subgenres if you prefer, and readers might like one approach over the other but I don't think that makes one more or less valid than the other, IMO.
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Comment on Is it time to include pronouns? in ~tildes
TheRtRevKaiser (edited )Link ParentYeah I tend to think of @ing someone as explicitly getting their attention, like saying "Hey Joe, what do you think?" It always feels kind of rude if I'm just referring to something that person...Yeah I tend to think of @ing someone as explicitly getting their attention, like saying "Hey Joe, what do you think?" It always feels kind of rude if I'm just referring to something that person did/said.
ETA: just had a minor panic attack when I thought I had pinged someone with the username 'ing', but fortunately that link just leads to a 404 😅
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Comment on What is your Mandela effect moment? in ~movies
TheRtRevKaiser Link ParentYeah this one gets me. I very much remember the cornucopia.Yeah this one gets me. I very much remember the cornucopia.
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Comment on Why normal people aren’t using AI agents in ~tech
TheRtRevKaiser Link ParentAlright, now I know you're full of it... /shave successfully set up printing on Windows
Alright, now I know you're full of it... /s
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Comment on New Zealand has a new official language — English in ~society
TheRtRevKaiser Link ParentIt makes plenty of sense to me if you are trying to redress some of the long-term effects of colonialism. It would be one thing if places like NZ existed in a vacuum - if there were two language...It makes plenty of sense to me if you are trying to redress some of the long-term effects of colonialism. It would be one thing if places like NZ existed in a vacuum - if there were two language groups coexisting with no other historical context and one is bigger then sure, the argument that more people will understand agency names in the majority language holds water. But it's kind of messed up for European colonizers to move into a place that is already occupied, then systematically oppress, enslave, and kill the folks that were there before until the language of the colonizer is the majority language (often this is accomplished systematically as well, by outlawing the use of native languages in schools or by just straight up stealing native children and giving them to colonizer families or institutions to be raised within the colonial culture.) and then arguing "well, most people understand our language so no point in using yours for anything". You address that sort of thing by (somewhat artificially) encouraging the use of the minority language in public, teaching it in schools, etc. There might be some mild inconvenience to the majority population, but that seems like a small thing to ask to allow those cultures to coexist in a way that doesn't continue the trend toward cultural and linguistic extinction.
ETA: I'm not from NZ (Aoteorea?). I'm sure there is history and nuance there that is different from other colonies. I'm speaking generally, as someone who thinks that it's worthwhile to try and preserve cultures that were nearly wiped out by colonialism, because it is too late for some and because I think we're generally better off when cultures are able to coexist even when that is mildly inconvenient to me.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
TheRtRevKaiser (edited )Link ParentImmaculate vibes on both of the Strange games. Those two games probably came closest to filling to the gap left by Book of Hours for me. Speaking of which, I keep meaning to pick up the DLC for...Immaculate vibes on both of the Strange games. Those two games probably came closest to filling to the gap left by Book of Hours for me. Speaking of which, I keep meaning to pick up the DLC for that game and giving it another go...
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Comment on Why does Opera GX rarely come up in browser discussions? in ~tech
TheRtRevKaiser Link ParentYeah a lot of browser preference is very subjective for sure. I don't generally want to sync between devices so that's not been much of a priority for me. I think firefox has tab sync now so that...Yeah a lot of browser preference is very subjective for sure. I don't generally want to sync between devices so that's not been much of a priority for me. I think firefox has tab sync now so that has probably flowed downstream to Zen as well.
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Comment on Why does Opera GX rarely come up in browser discussions? in ~tech
TheRtRevKaiser Link ParentI wanted to like Vivaldi, but I found their built in adblocker to not be up to the task much of the time. I wound up switching to Zen, a Firefox fork, instead. I've enjoyed that pretty well so...I wanted to like Vivaldi, but I found their built in adblocker to not be up to the task much of the time. I wound up switching to Zen, a Firefox fork, instead. I've enjoyed that pretty well so far, and it's nice to have support for UBO which I barely ever see letting an ad through, including on YouTube.
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Comment on UBlock Origin got turned off with my most recent Brave browser update. Any alternatives? in ~tech
TheRtRevKaiser Link ParentYou're absolutely right that there's not a firefox fork that has all of the features of Vivaldi. I recently swapped to Zen after getting frustrated with Vivaldi and have mostly been pleased with...You're absolutely right that there's not a firefox fork that has all of the features of Vivaldi. I recently swapped to Zen after getting frustrated with Vivaldi and have mostly been pleased with it, but ymmv.
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
TheRtRevKaiser LinkMy daughter tore an (unintentional) hole in her favorite overalls. I wanted to try and mend them, but I wasn't confident I'd be able to do it in a way that wasn't obvious, so I decided to just do...My daughter tore an (unintentional) hole in her favorite overalls. I wanted to try and mend them, but I wasn't confident I'd be able to do it in a way that wasn't obvious, so I decided to just do the exact opposite and make it decorative instead.
I think it turned out pretty nice, and while I was at it I did some backstitching around the edges of the hole that was already in the knee to keep it from tearing like this again quite so easily, or from fraying further. All in all I was pretty pleased with how the whole thing turned out!
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Comment on OpenAI and Anthropic endorse call for US government to "pace" AI progress in ~comp
TheRtRevKaiser Link ParentI mean, a classic pattern in regulatory capture is companies benefiting from a lax regulatory regime, getting big/capturing market share, and then lobbying regulators for regulations that will...I mean, a classic pattern in regulatory capture is companies benefiting from a lax regulatory regime, getting big/capturing market share, and then lobbying regulators for regulations that will make it difficult/impossible for smaller companies to become major competitors. I think the skepticism is warranted, I don't particularly believe that these companies have our best interests at heart.
Really happy about the visuals, it looks trippy in a way that could really be fun with this particular book.