aphoenix's recent activity
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Comment on Midweek Movie Free Talk in ~movies
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
aphoenix LinkI have recently started (re)reading The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson. I have read the first six books, but I recently learned that since the last time I...I have recently started (re)reading The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson. I have read the first six books, but I recently learned that since the last time I read them, more books have been released in the series. I have started on Lord Foul's Bane.
Broadly, the series is fantasy, and focuses on Thomas Covenant, a man from the "real" world who is brought into The Land, a fantasy realm of monsters, heroes, and magic. Covenant has leprosy, is frequently detestable, and does not believe that what he is experiencing is real, hence his eponym, the Unbeliever. His wedding ring, which he wears despite the fact that he is divorced, is a talisman of power, and the underlying struggle that he experiences is mostly about various impotencies that he experiences in the real world - physical, emotional, spiritual - and the fact that The Land returns his potency and heals him. The first book is particularly difficult to get through because near the beginning of the book, Covenant sexually assaults a teenage girl, yet remains the protagonist.
I remember really liking this book 25 years ago, and I think it's still quite good. I'm looking forward to getting to the new books in a few weeks.
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Comment on TV Tuesdays Free Talk in ~tv
aphoenix Link ParentI want to be clear that I think it's ok to just not like Carol, so I'm not arguing that point. However, I think that it's a bit strange to expect her to have undergone much of a journey in the...I want to be clear that I think it's ok to just not like Carol, so I'm not arguing that point.
However, I think that it's a bit strange to expect her to have undergone much of a journey in the first couple of episodes, when she is mostly dealing with profound and absolute loss. At that point, she's still being established as a character. To me, at least part of the interesting nature of the show is that the two people who are working to save humanity are flawed and complex, and they give themselves their own barriers to effectively navigating the apocalypse. Carol especially does change and try to be better over the course of the season.
And I have to disagree about Walter White. In the first episode of the series, it was obvious that he was the bad guy. It took him no time at all to arrive at "I will be blackmailing a former student into cooking and selling Meth". It is basically the first thing that happens to him after his diagnosis; I'm pretty sure it's the first episode. He gets cancer and then decides "fuck it, going to just make the world worse". It is also season one when he gets an easy out - a job offer with full health benefits - that would allow him to immediately stop being a drug dealer, and he opts to not take it. Walt starts bad, continues to be bad, and then is just honest about how bad he is by the end. It's not all that much of a journey, and I don't think he is profoundly different.
I think that even in an episode-to-episode comparison, Carol is a better person than Walt. She's dealt a worse hand and she handles it better.
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Comment on TV Tuesdays Free Talk in ~tv
aphoenix (edited )Link ParentEdit: just to set a tone, I start by saying "it's interesting" and I mean that it is interesting. I am not trying to be snarky or argumentative, I just have resting argument voice. It's...Edit: just to set a tone, I start by saying "it's interesting" and I mean that it is interesting. I am not trying to be snarky or argumentative, I just have resting argument voice.
It's interesting that you brought up Breaking Bad, because I think Carol is a way better person and more likeable than Walter White, and in the face of much worse hardships than Walter faced. And Carol is at least "the good guy", as opposed to Walter who is definitely a bad guy.
Mild spoilers for early series / characterizations of Carol
It's maybe important to remember that while she is a grumpy alcoholic, she did just watch the love of her life die, then experienced the end of human civilization. I think that the way she is facing things is actually pretty reasonable; she's one of the two reasonable survivors.
I have seen a lot of people online who were rooting for the Plurbs over Carol, and that is just wild to me. It seems similar to the people who were rooting for Walter White to win in BB and didn't understand that despite being the main character, he was objectively the villain of the show. The Plurbs have ended humanity and are attempting to relay the signal to end other civilizations on other planets; they are very bad.
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Comment on TV Tuesdays Free Talk in ~tv
aphoenix Link ParentI also just watched Pluribus over the last couple of weeks, and had the exact same opinion.I also just watched Pluribus over the last couple of weeks, and had the exact same opinion.
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Comment on What game are you terrible at? in ~games
aphoenix Link ParentIt isn't actually "solved" in the way that one typically says games are solved, nor is it actually solvable. See solved games for a definition of what Catan is not. However, vanilla Catan is...It isn't actually "solved" in the way that one typically says games are solved, nor is it actually solvable. See solved games for a definition of what Catan is not. However, vanilla Catan is pretty simple in terms of game mechanics, and experienced players who know the mechanics will win more than other people. There are no guaranteed wins though; you could get on all the 6 / 8 spots and have them never roll in a game and then lose, because chance plays a significant role in individual games. But over time, if you find good spots on the board and make savvy trades, your win percentages will go up.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
aphoenix Link ParentI really struggled with your comment, because I think it missed a lot of the things I was saying, to the point that it felt like it was not made in good faith, so I left a pithy nothing comment....I really struggled with your comment, because I think it missed a lot of the things I was saying, to the point that it felt like it was not made in good faith, so I left a pithy nothing comment. However that itself is uncharitable, so I have deleted that comment and left this one instead.
I parsed your comment as fairly angry, but I think it also had a bit of misinformation in it, which I'll address right off the bat:
It's the epitome of the white man's arrogance to believe that their tolerance for racism out of some feeling of guilt should allow them to then redefine what racism means
You seem to be operating under the misapprehension that white people came up with the idea of systemic or institutional racism and you are incorrect. The idea is generally credited to Kwame Ture (born Stokely Carmichael) and Charles V. Hamilton, both of whom were black / African American researchers. It is also not a predominantly "white" thing to believe either; a brief google suggested to me that maybe half of white people in North America believe in systemic or institutional racism. Systemic racism is not an arrogance of white people that they came up with to deprive anyone of anything; it is hard-fought research by people who have felt the effect of it.
I also think that it's important to note that defining systemic racism to mean something does not negate the existence of racism on a personal level, nor does it mean that racism at a personal level is not problematic.
that attitude pervaded enough such that my race is now sometimes included with this idea that people can't be racist towards us
If you're okay with someone being racist to you, fine
My assumption is that you are white, and are talking about how I said above that people can sometimes say that it's not possible to be racist against white people, because they are talking about systemic racism when they say that. You should note that what I did not say was that I think that it's not possible to be racist against white people.
If you read again, you might note that I actually specifically talked about people being prejudiced against me for my skin colour, and it bothering me. In my comment above I was actually talking about the fact that when people say "racism" they can be talking about different things, and the overloading of the term can lead to anger. I think that's actually directly supported by your response. I was talking about the difficulties of navigating a complex topic, and you zeroed right in on one of the things that I said could happen in a discussion as if it had happened in the discussion.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
aphoenix Link ParentThank you my friend. I try to find delight in building bridges instead of putting up walls, which is exactly what you've talked about here. The breadth of the human condition is such that I just...Thank you my friend.
I try to find delight in building bridges instead of putting up walls, which is exactly what you've talked about here. The breadth of the human condition is such that I just find it infinitely more interesting to find common ground and empathize.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
aphoenix Link ParentI realize this is obvious, but you can only control your own charity, you cannot extend or demand charity from others. You can also elect to not be offended when someone is being uncharitable, and...- Exemplary
I'm all for extending maximal charity to the speaker's frustration, but being on the receiving end of such generalizations also deserves charity.
I realize this is obvious, but you can only control your own charity, you cannot extend or demand charity from others. You can also elect to not be offended when someone is being uncharitable, and the extension of charity from you to someone else is, in my opinion, always a good thing.
I have interpreted your point as "it's important to point out that racism against white people is also something that we should remind people is bad". If that is not the correct interpretation of what you said in your last paragraph, please feel free to ignore everything I say here.
The topic of racism is a difficult one, because racism is an overloaded term, and the overload leads people to a lot of frustrating miscommunications. Some people use racism to mean any time someone is personally prejudiced against another person based on their race; this definition allows racism against any race. Some people use racism to mean mean systemic racism; this definition frequently does not consider specific cases of the prejudice, so you have people saying things like "it's impossible to be racist against white people." And frequently people talk across each other when bringing up things like this because one person is talking about racism in one way and one person is talking about it in a different way. I've only outlined two possible definitions, and there are more; there's lots of opportunities for miscommunications and anger.
And I guess I introduced the "white people suck" bit above, so I'll tackle it a bit more head on. There are a large number of people who have a lived experience such that in their lives, the white people they know have caused them nothing but problems, and there are a large number of white people in the news who are causing immense destruction to the world. So taking any time to tell people who have this negative association with white people, "actually, prejudice against white people is bad, okay" becomes something that they interpret as very aggressive and only exacerbates the problem. This is only made more difficult to discuss because of the mixing of personal prejudice and systemic prejudice; if you are a member of a group that has not historically suffered from systemic prejudice, then you don't know what it is like to be a member of a group that has, and so holding forth on the topic is at best distasteful, and at worst perpetrating more systemic prejudice.
In the post above, I put four points down, and I numbered them in rough order of importance, and it's notable that I put "it's okay to give up" above "extend charity". In almost every case I would suggest that it is more important to leave the conversation than it is to stand up for white people and remind people that racism against whites is bad.
To be clear: prejudice is bad. It can bother me when people don't like me because of my race, but as a white man, I have had it much easier than a lot of people, and I haven't experienced systemic racism, so when someone doesn't like me, just for being white, I shut up about it and just let it be. There is no point at which it is really beneficial for me to hold forth about the wrongs of prejudice against white people, and I have understood that it's not about me, it's actually because of systemic racism, and that should piss you off more than any interpersonal prejudice that you have ever experienced.
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Comment on D6 TTRPG suggestions in ~games.tabletop
aphoenix LinkOkay, there's been a few days of great answers, so now I'm comfortable giving an off-the-wall answer that specifically doesn't meet the requirements that you gave, that it use only D6, but...Okay, there's been a few days of great answers, so now I'm comfortable giving an off-the-wall answer that specifically doesn't meet the requirements that you gave, that it use only D6, but actually can help with the underlying issue, which is discomfort with the types of dice and what they mean.
Kids on Bikes is a pretty cool system where each character uses one of each: a D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, D20. Each of these correspond to the stats, which are Brains, Brawn, Fight, Flight, Charm and Grit, which roughly correspond to D&D abilities. If you put your D20 on Brains, then you are very smart, because you can roll up to a 20 on Brains checks; if you put your D4 on Charm, you are unlikely to rizz people, because you can only roll up to a 4.
One might ask, "Why would you recommend a game that explicitly uses every dice type for someone who is uncomfortable with variable types of dice?" and the answer is that it's kind of using dice, but with training wheels. If you are playing in the physical world, on your character sheet, you can physically place the die that you use on the corresponding stat. Instead of the DM saying "can you roll a D20 for me", they will say "Can you roll Grit for me?" The player would have the correct die on the grit section of their player sheet, and then roll it.
For the most part, we found that this removed anxiety around which die is which; people don't have to think "what is a D10 and why am I rolling it for damage, and why is it appropriate here?" they just have to have 6 dice on a piece of paper, and then roll them when called upon. The system is a lot simpler than DnD is; almost everything is some kind of contested roll or difficulty check, so if the joy in a game is in the minutiae of character creation, this isn't a good system for you or your group. But if you like fleshing out a character in broad mechanical strokes, and then focusing on story, this can work really well, and over time, can build comfort with the different kinds of dice. It's a good system for getting into TTRPGs.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
aphoenix Link ParentAh, the joys of shooting from the hip while making comments... I definitely wrote "it's just men telling women..." which clearly means that it's the only thing that is happening. But what I meant...Ah, the joys of shooting from the hip while making comments... I definitely wrote "it's just men telling women..." which clearly means that it's the only thing that is happening. But what I meant was that it was happening a lot, but wasn't the only thing that was happening. Moreover, your comments in that thread are one of the things that I was thinking about when I wrote my point 2 above (support instead of rebuttal). It's exactly the sort of thing one can do to engage in a conversation like that, because it acknowledges the underlying issue, but gently points toward solutions. I went back and checked and I don't think I parse any of what you wrote as dismissive.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
aphoenix Link ParentThe reason a vote is an expedient way of doing this is because it respects the privacy of the user and lets them give the knowledge of their actions at their choosing. While some of the things you...The reason a vote is an expedient way of doing this is because it respects the privacy of the user and lets them give the knowledge of their actions at their choosing. While some of the things you are talking about are cool ideas, I would run, not walk, away from a news aggregator or discussion site that explicitly tracked things like how long you viewed an article, or limited discussion to people who had clicked a link, and used that as a metric to show other random users. I'm not even one of the more privacy minded people here in Tildes.
Votes are a mini "opt in" that you can choose to partake in, or not. And I think it's important to be allowed to choose.
Edit: I am not trying to yuck your yum, or be hyper critical. My tone should be perceived as "as kind as possible" and I also acknowledge that it's ok for you to build something that is not for me, but I wanted to give you an idea of why something like that might not work for everyone.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
aphoenix Link Parent/shrug I think at this point we just agree to disagree./shrug
I think at this point we just agree to disagree.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
aphoenix Link ParentWhile I agree that it is possible to question this in good faith, I don't think that is what happened in that case, especially when the user in question just straight up rejected one of the best...While I agree that it is possible to question this in good faith, I don't think that is what happened in that case, especially when the user in question just straight up rejected one of the best examples - crash test dummies. When someone basically says, "my vibes of truthiness is better than that well sourced book you brought up" then they can be safely discounted as not questioning in good faith.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
aphoenix Link ParentI think people can definitely disagree, and it's important sometimes to have discussions about those disagreements. There's a time and a place, though, and sometimes there are things that don't...I think people can definitely disagree, and it's important sometimes to have discussions about those disagreements. There's a time and a place, though, and sometimes there are things that don't require rebuttals. For example, I would say that "the default experience that product creators tend to consider is males" is not something that requires rebuttal, because it's just true, and if you try to rebut it, then people are going to get testy about it, because most of the time the people that do that are sexist.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
aphoenix Link ParentIt is difficult to notice things when you're the "in" group. In this case, this is a topic that was posted in ~life.women. It is a group that is for things related to life, and specifically for...- Exemplary
It is difficult to notice things when you're the "in" group.
In this case, this is a topic that was posted in ~life.women. It is a group that is for things related to life, and specifically for the lives of women. In this case, it was an article about how things are not designed with women in mind most of the time. The top comment is one made by a woman, and that woman states specifically that while the article is about jars, it's really about everything. The top response is a man, coming in and explaining why the woman's lived experience was wrong. That comment was given the exemplary tag; a travesty in my opinion. Then, when faced with rebuttal, many users jumped in, explaining to various women about how, um actually, many things are made for consumers and not just for men, as if that's some kind of point. Then they claimed that physics was a limiting factor for a lot of things, like tools, despite the fact that I have any number of expensive tools specifically chosen so that my wife or daughters can use them, so obviously physics is not the problem. All the way down, it's just men telling women that their experiences aren't real, listen to us men explain it to you, here's how things actually are. One of the most egregious things is when someone brings up the wonderful book Invisible Women (a great, insanely well sourced read about this very topic) and then one of the men says that he doesn't believe it.
If you want to not go down a rabbit hole of jackassery, then there are some very easy steps you can follow to not be a jackass:
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When you read someone talking about their lived experience, read it as if you believe every word to be the gospel truth, even if your lived experience indicates something different. This is the most important thing that you can do. Listen or read, and try to understand that what they are saying is true.
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Instead of engaging in rebuttal, engage in support. Don't try to correct someone else's lived experience. This happens so much online and in person; someone will share, and then someone else will come in and explain how that lived experience isn't correct. Support doesn't necessarily mean acquiescence to a point you fundamentally disagree with, though.
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Learn to give up. Sometimes, it is not important to "win" an argument, because sometimes it's not an argument, or even a discussion. Sometimes there is a gulf so wide that you cannot make inroads to find a common ground. That's okay. This is especially difficult when you are right and the other person is wrong. To give an extreme example, sometimes I will come across discussions on other sites, and the point at hand is "all white people suck" or "all heterosexual people suck" or something like that. It is not incumbent on you to enlighten the person making such a comment.
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Engage in the principal of charity. Using the above example, "all white people suck" is a pretty hard to defend thing, but if you look at it as "all the white people I have met or read about suck" then it's pretty understandable. Similarly, if someone says something like "all men are terrible" you can do the insertions: "all [the] men [that I have known in my life] are terrible". And again, I'll refer to point 3, it is not incumbent upon anyone to explicitly add the words for other people. Sometimes you can just not engage.
It's difficult to follow all four of those points, and I frequently have problems following my own guidelines here, but just knowing and attempting to follow them will make your online experiences easier.
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Comment on Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely in ~tildes.official
aphoenix (edited )Link ParentI think that if you look at that thread in isolation, then your point is "correct". The most obviously hostile thing is the (I think quite understandable) edit made by the OP. This is one of the...I think that if you look at that thread in isolation, then your point is "correct". The most obviously hostile thing is the (I think quite understandable) edit made by the OP. This is one of the issues with systemic sexism. In this case, it is useful to think of the straw breaking the camel's back analogy; someone coming into a space that is explicitly supposed to be for women ~life.women and then telling a woman that she is wrong when she is complaining about how things aren't built with women in mind is a straw, and the edit that you think is hostile is the camel's back breaking. People are telling women every goddamn day that their experiences aren't real, and it sucks. Eventually, those people will get told, and in this case, they got offended and felt persecuted by it. Even later in that thread, the same user is dismissive of a well sourced book that cites multiple case studies about how crash test dummies emulated crashes for men decades before women (edit for clarity, the book is not about crash test dummies, that's just one chapter). No reason given, just disbelief based on vibes. It's difficult to deal with that level of bullshit regularly, so it should be understandable when people get frustrated about it.
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Comment on D6 TTRPG suggestions in ~games.tabletop
aphoenix Link ParentI just want to second in a more demonstrative way than just voting, that if you are looking for something that is fully D6, then GURPS is definitely the way to go. It is pretty straight forward if...I just want to second in a more demonstrative way than just voting, that if you are looking for something that is fully D6, then GURPS is definitely the way to go. It is pretty straight forward if you play the light version, and you can add more and more as people get into it, because it is pretty modular.
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Comment on Any other tenure-track faculty on Tildes? in ~talk
aphoenix LinkMy wife is a tenured professor at a Canadian University that is an R1 equivalent - McMaster University, a Medical / Doctoral institution. I am a programmer / manager of programmers. So I may be...My wife is a tenured professor at a Canadian University that is an R1 equivalent - McMaster University, a Medical / Doctoral institution. I am a programmer / manager of programmers. So I may be able to offer some kind of insights into things? I'm happy to listen-read to anything you want to share.
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Comment on What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking? in ~food
aphoenix Link ParentWhat kind of onion did you use? I have sometimes used shallots instead of white or yellow onions. It avoids the sharpness and almost never overwhelms other flavours, but still gives you that good...What kind of onion did you use? I have sometimes used shallots instead of white or yellow onions. It avoids the sharpness and almost never overwhelms other flavours, but still gives you that good oniony taste.
The Last House
A family is stuck in their house when it starts raining and something keeps the doors and windows from opening. They see it's not just them - all around in the neighbourhood people are stuck. And there's something out there in the rain...
The Good: the creature design was phenomenal. The concept of the movie is great. Heck, read my mini intro up there, it's neat!
The Bad: good lord what was the last half hour? And why is there a 40 minute side quest around creating traps? I am all for suspension of disbelief while watching movies, but there has to be in-universe consistency.
The Ugly: the final act of the movie is an unmitigated disaster that makes me question if the writers have basic knowledge about things like "how does water work"? It was pretty clear that they must have had several scripts or ideas that were disjointed, and they tried to write their way from one to another.
Mild spoilers for the movie
My theory is that there were three screenwriters and they had three scripts. In one script, an engineer makes more and more complex traps to trap animals for food, to survive. In another script, a house fills with water and there is a monster in the house that they have to escape. In the last, people are stuck in their homes for a long time because of magical rain. They all had coffee together and complained about how they couldn't figure out how to progress their stories, and while complaining, they realized that they could just stick them together with duct tape.
There are a lot of relatively cool moments in the film that just don't work together or aren't supported in any way, and there are also things that seem to work directly against each other, such as the house being supernaturally closed due to the rain, but that not effecting the chimney.
As a b-movie fan, this is one of those times where almost every single scene is something I would give a B+ or better, but the movie as a whole is a complete failure.
Verdict: 2/5 and almost all of those marks are for monster design.