AnarchistArtificer @ AnarchistArtificer @slrpnk.net

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2 yr. ago

I think that font might be Proxima Nova, which was designed by Mark Simonson. When looking up that name, I learned that this design was inspired by "the roundness of geometric sans serifs like Futura" and "the proportions of modern grotesques like Helvetica.", so I suppose we should also tip our hats to Paul Renner (Futura), and Max Midinger and Eduard Hoffman (Helvetica)

(N.b. I am only moderately knowledgeable in typeface history. Any other nerds who enjoy learning may appreciate this random video

I hadn't thought about it quite like this before, so thank you for your comment

Oh yeah, it's a great metaphor hat's really taken off with disabled people. I really love how in the original story, the choice of spoons was convenient, and are just a placeholder for "arbitrary units"; the slight absurdity of spoons in this context means that when someone says "I'm running low on spoons", it causes me to reflect on the entirely subjective and relative experience of ability and disability.

Edit: That is to say that whilst the person you're replying to struggles to go to Costco when they're low spoons, for a different person, going shopping may be something they find easier to do with low spoons.

It genuinely gladdens my heart to hear you say this, because it suggests that there is at least some length of genuinely caring about inclusion by the people in charge at your workplace; I have seen too many instances of corporations paying lip-service towards DEI whilst fostering a truly toxic workplace culture. It's nice to hear a story from somewhere that's different and that it makes a difference to how safe your workplace feels

I'm going to use TERFs as an analogy to explain what I think it is (and I do mean TERFs, not your garden variety transphones). There used to be a subreddit called /r/GenderCritical, before it got (rightfully) banned for hate speech. I had a look around there a few times, trying to understand their incomprehensible ideology.

At first, I only became more baffled. I saw so many stories that had the rough shape of "I am a women who was abused, victimised or otherwise oppressed by a cis man and/or men and that's why I now hate trans women". I just didn't understand how those two things connected. I get that radical feminists tend to take a biologically essentialist view that undermines trans identities. However, I couldn't understand why they put such effort into distilled down their bitterness and resentment into the vitriol to throw at trans women, as opposed to the men who hurt them (and the patriarchal systems that hurt them).

Over the years, I've come to understand that many TERFs have experienced trauma such that they feel powerless and small when looking at the actual cause of their systemic oppression (i.e. the patriarchy), so through a trick of transference, they direct their rage and grief onto transness instead. Fighting an already marginalised foe means that they get both the feeling of fighting something ideological that's larger than them, but also they don't have to confront how small they actually are when fighting against oppression (because each of us is small and helpless against systemic oppression; we can't do shit without solidarity with other people). To be clear, I don't consider this absolutely isn't a legitimate excuse for someone to be an awful person; however, it does help me to understand why someone who calls themself a feminist would take such a stance (as much as I'd like to consider them "no true feminist", I feel like I need to acknowledge the complex baggage of the term "feminist" if I'm to identify as one).

I think people who crusade against DEI initiatives are doing a similar sort of transference, where their real enemy is in fact Capitalism, but that feels like so impossible of a foe that they feel hopeless; it reminds me of that widely shared Mark Fisher quote about how it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. And so they tell themselves that there must be some big, bad, insidious force at work, making organisations opt into DEI initiatives, and it must be the same force that's responsible for the deep unease they feel when they look at the world, or contemplate the future their grandchildren have to look forward to.

In a sense, they're right in that there are nefarious forces at play and the game is indeed rigged. The problem is that they've picked the wrong target and would be better served going after the oil barons and billionairess. In terms of my background, I probably have far more in common with the average Trump voter than I do the average Democrat, so I relate to the hopelessness that their misplaced rage protects them from feeling. The tragedy is that their ignorance hurts everyone, including themselves; None of us are free until all of us are free.

Reminds me of the Medtronic ventilators that got hacked to unlock them when Medtronic insisted on similar nonsense during the pandemic

When I did a first aid class, there was a paramedic teacher who said he got some dodgy looks when he was a beginner and used this one. We were taught "Staying Alive".

My understanding was that the phrase "from the river to the sea" is associated with a "one-state-solution" to the conflict. The second link in the comment you're replying to goes into this more in depth, but it's not a new discussion: here's a piece from Edward Saïd in 1999.

A one state solution doesn't call for the genocide of Israelis. The equal and active participation of the Israeli people would be necessary for such a one state solution to work; you can't solve a genocide with more genocide.

I wonder if that may be the cause of the block in the original post — i.e. if the fascist accounts were posting lots of "sensitive" content (such as stuff that would, in a different era, been far more likely to be removed if reported), then it might appear like the censorship that OP saw. I vaguely recall an instance of something similar happening, and if so, the "censorship" would be an automated error, and it being visible now would be after the manual intervention.

Well you can color me intrigued! I'm going to go read about what that is

This reminds me of the UK's shelved(?) plan to detain refugees and deport them to Rwanda. I don't just mean people who have come from Rwanda, I mean everyone, just using Rwanda for people storage. If it wasn't such a dark topic, I'd say the whole thing was slapstick, both in it's original conception and attempted implementation.

I got that trait too. When I first picked it up, some 18 years into the game, I didn't mind too much, but I didn't realise that the trait gets worse as you level up? Apparently the version of the trait that my character has can be prevented from progressing by spending more time "outside", but that just sounds like a scam intended to make me spend more on some new dlc or something.

I agree that hyper focus is a mixed bag. I've heard it works best for players with a really clear plan for their character build, so they can use the buffs most strategically, but I have no idea how people can make effective characters based on such RNG mechanics.

Regarding the depressed moodle, I feel your pain; I feel like whoever designed this game needs to read about reinforcing and balancing feedback loops, because it's fucking dreadful with how easy it is to get into a losing spiral, where you end up with such severe debuffs that it feels impossible to get out of. Honestly, even though all my friends play this game and seem to have a lot of fun in it, I've come close to just stopping playing a few times, with how unfun it is.

This might not be helpful advice, because the effect doesn't seem to proc for everyone, but apparently when you've been stuck with the depressed moodlet for a long time (and apparently some other conditions), you start to receive a hidden xp bonus to routine tasks. I always thought it was bullshit they told people to keep them playing, but I tried it once (almost out of spite to prove that it wouldn't work), and I found that yeah, I did actually see bonus progression from lower level tasks that wouldn't ordinarily give xp. I found that the "showering" and "eating" tasks were the highest yield, but the xp-farming loop was too grindy and I got burnt out too easily to keep it up alongside the debuffs. I found that the xp multiplier still applied to smaller quests though, like "use wet-wipes to approximate a shower", or "eat a snack", and I could do those things close enough to my daily respawn point that it was easy enough to do on the side.

This certainly isn't a solution though. Like I say, the balancing of this game is out of whack, and it sounds like you've been having a grim time of it. I hope that you're able to break out of this cycle somehow and find aspects of the game you can engage in again, whether that happens via the game gets a big balancing update (unrealistic hope with these devs, I know), or something other way (such as grinding, or finding an exploit in the code that allows you to shed your debuffs)

Ooh, this was great! Thanks for the rec.

As an ex-drummer, I enjoyed how stylishly understated the drums were. I used to enjoy leaning into a mock rivalry with bassists, the humour of which was partly anchored in the deep solidarity of being rhythm-section

Thanks for the info. When I got online today, I was very confused at what had gone down; I appreciate people such as yourself who have made it easier to follow current events in this tiny corner of the internet

I want you to know that I'm screenshotting this comment (and the one you're replying to) to send to a friend, who will find it very funny.

I do know an Anglican priest-in-training who refers to God with They/Them pronouns because thinking of God in a monogender way is weird to them. This apparently isn't particularly controversial within their mini community, although there was a big argument once when someone suggested that capitalised pronouns (such as He/Him or They/Them) technically means God uses neopronouns

The way that someone explained it to be once is that if we think about the typical monotheistic, omnipotent, omniscient God — surely a God would be far more than what humans can comprehend at all, right? So any single characterisation of God is going to seem weirdly limited, because it'll be grounded in our human perspective. So the idea is sort of like God(TM) is like a diamond, and each of the Hindu Gods is like a facet of that gem. The problem is that our human perspectives can't understand the diamond (similar to how visualising 4D shapes like a tesseract is trippy and hard) so we have to try to understand the diamond by looking at each of its facets and trying to imagine an entity that can be all of those things at once.

As someone who is neither Hindu or Christian, it reminds me of the Holy Trinity: that God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I agree this post was likely bait, but I also feel the need to share my civil dissent against it nonetheless.

I'm a woman who is pretty damn sick of bland male protagonists, but "bland" is the key word here; for all the games ostensibly about men, there are few that explore masculinity like Disco Elysium does — it's a huge part of who Harry is as a character. I can't find it now, but there's a Tumblr text post that I loved that basically said that they can imagine Harry winning a drag king competition, and then people being like "you do know that he's not in drag, right?", and the voters responding "yes, we know, but also are you going to look at this and tell me this man isn't performing masculinity in the most drag-like manner ever?". The actual post was worded far better than this, but you get the point.

Also, Disco Elysium may be a grimy detective story, but I found it was pretty ACAB in a really interesting way. But it also looked at some of the usual social functions that the police perform that ideally would still be performed by someone even if the police were mass abolished.

The thing is that this kind of thing works for people who don't know better. I have spoken to dudes who like the abstract notion of Musk being a gamer, probably because it wasn't apparent to them that his Path of Exile account was so obviously boosted. Similarly, a script-kiddie can seem like a skilled programmer to people who have little knowledge of programming

I've watched/played/read things I wouldn't have discovered if there hadn't been masses of people crying "woke" about them; there was a period where it was a really useful recommendation engine, because they'd be especially pissy if high quality stuff was woke. Unfortunately, that doesn't work as well anymore, because "woke" is increasingly meaningless