Mnemnosyne @ Mnemnosyne @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

While that union done fucked up, this 'decertify the union and then I suppose join some other union maybe' plan seems incredibly dumb too.

Even a completely shit union is probably better than none at all, which is what you're likely to get doing it this way. Seems like there should already be a union selected, with the recommendation being to decertify from this one and simultaneously join the new one.

It's worse in that there is now no common way to say what it used to mean, without adding several more words, where previously one would have communicated the meaning clearly.

Anytime a language change increases the likelihood of misunderstanding it definitely has negative effects. It may also have positive effects, but it shouldn't be simply accepted without regard to that.

Now, disagreement on whether a particular change's negative outweighs its positive is going to happen, obviously, but it's important to acknowledge the bad parts exist.

It's also important not to accept a mistake and insist that it's fine because language changes, out of pride and desire to not be mistaken - a trend I definitely see a lot. It's often not 'I am using this word in a different way and have considered it's implications', it's 'I don't want to be wrong so I will insist that I didn't make a mistake, language changes!'

While language does evolve over time, we shouldn't encourage unnecessary and somewhat negative evolutions of it, and especially not encourage it to change over less time.

When two previously distinct words come to have the same meaning, this can be a problem. First, older written things become less comprehensible. Few of us today could read and understand old english because so many words have changed. The evolution of language has taken a long time to get to that point, at least. But if we encourage the acceleration of this change, something which appears to be happening even without encouragement, how long will it be?

Today, we can still pretty clearly understand things written 200 years ago; some bits are confusing but for the most part it is still clear. If language change accelerates enough, in the future, people may struggle to understand something written only a hundred years ago, or even less.

The second problem is that if the word for a thing goes away, it becomes more difficult to express that concept. Consider the word 'literally' whose meaning has become extremely muddled. In order to express the original concept, we now require additional emphasis. There are other, more difficult to think of terms like that - a concept for which a particular word would have been perfect had the word's meaning not significantly changed.

So when a word's usage is corrected, do not be so quick to defend the misuse of the word through 'language evolves!' If people accept that 'oops, I used that word wrong' and then see if there is already a better word for what they were trying to express to correct themselves with, that is probably better - in most cases.

Even more notably, new words should be used when possible, if an older word doesn't quite fit a newly emerging thing, or even a concept that has existed for some time but has not had a word to describe it precisely. One of my favorite examples of this is the word 'cromulent' which expresses a concept that did not have a specific word for it in common use at the time, even though the concept of 'understandable and linguistically correct' certainly already existed. Also consider the now common word 'emoji' which was coined specifically to represent this concept. This is an excellent evolution of language because it took nothing away. It arose in response to something which did not exist, and described that thing with a word created specifically for it.

That said, fighting against the evolution of language that has already happened and is far too entrenched to ever change is nonsensical. My father, for instance, insists 'cool' should be for temperature description only, even though that word possessed its non-temperature meaning before he was even born. Similarly, sometimes the change is resisted for bad reasons; like the word 'gay'. In these cases, it is best not to try to fight the change, but instead embrace and encourage it.

So ultimately, when a word is used wrong, consider whether the word evolving to the way it is being used is a positive change. If it does not make things better, it's probably best not to encourage it.

Most companies are doing this, sticking arbitration agreements in their user agreements. Most of the time it benefits them hugely since arbitration is typically much more favorable to them than court (which is already incredibly favorable to them).

Once in a while it bites them; I recall reading some company where thousands of users started going to arbitration, and that costs them cause they pay the arbitration fees. In that case they tried to weasel out of the arbitration agreement, but last I heard a judge made them stick to it, forcing them to pay arbitration fees for every user that was asking for it.

Might just be me enjoying Nimoy in most everything, or maybe ta just that Civ 4 is still the best of the series, but I really liked his lines in that one.

Lots of memorable ones but "the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy" always sticks out as one of my favorites.

No no no no... you can say that about legislation. You cannot say it about forcing them to end a strike then getting them crumbs as a consolation.

They weren't asking the government to 'get' them anything. They were striking and demanding it themselves. The only fucking response from liberals in that case SHOULD have been to stay the fuck out of it so the workers can get things on their terms.

If a game today came with a nice solid box, a cloth map, a 250 page manual that actually explains almost everything about the mechanics of the game, and WAS FUCKING FINISHED WHEN I BUY IT, getting maybe one patch and otherwise never changing, then I might be willing to pay more.

The 'job killers' argument is kinda bullshit. I want to kill jobs - I want to eliminate all labor that can be automated, such that in the ideal perfect future, no human ever has to work; they can spend every moment doing things they enjoy without worry.

But self checkout is not automation. No human work has been eliminated. It is the same exact fucking checkout process, only now the customer does it instead, and the store doesn't pay the cashier. And no they don't pass that savings on to you because of course they don't, they just pocket the difference.

Deer usually have ample power to prevent their death; most of the time they have sufficient time to get out of the way, but they do not do so.

Which really makes the comparison even more on point, since as a whole our civilization could have taken action but chose not to.

That is one perspective that works for some people but I strongly disagree.

Dice rolls exist to resolve conflicts between the player and DM stories, yes...but they also exist to create new and interesting situations which neither player nor DM would have chosen.

Yes, the dice can create unsatisfying moments and even end characters or entire parties in a way that doesn't feel great. But for each time they have done so in my experience, they have created far more awesome moments, simply by following the rules. And without allowing the unsatisfying ones, the good ones don't really happen either, and don't feel as satisfying.

Um, yes? Assuming I haven't done anything that will get me in trouble, and that the society we're in doesn't punish wrongthink, then most definitely; a mind reader should be much better at counseling than anyone else.

Anyone who thinks evil characters have to be jerks to their own party isn't playing an evil character, they're playing stupid characters.

If anything, evil characters that are not morons should be more fair and more protective of the party, because if they get caught doing something against the group, in their own mindset it is perfectly justified to immediately kill them over it. And even if they don't get killed, finding another competent group you can work with to accomplish your goals is difficult.

Evil characters can and should genuinely care about some people. They should also find some people to be sufficiently useful tools, even if they don't genuinely care for them, that maintaining them is worth some inconvenience. Anything less is being stupid evil. I can play dozens of different very evil characters that do not fuck over their party. Some of them can even get along in a party of mostly good people.

So does it remove some character concepts from sessions? Yes: the stupid, antisocial types that cannot work with a team and are dumb enough they'll get themselves killed before reaching fourth level probably.

Only reason he's leaving is he's not going to get reelected. He did shit that pissed off the trumpies and there's too many of them in his state for him to win the primary; he's probably already got a really credible (for certain definitions of credible) primary opponent who he knows he can't beat.

Also he might have something resembling principles, but those principles are themselves still monstrous and harmful.

Valve is directly owned by him with no stockholder nonsense, as I understand it, so perhaps he has willed it to someone who will handle it well. Hopefully. I don't like everything about Steam, but I do like that, assuming I'm not misinformed.

I love a quote I read once in a thing about alignment. "If you fix twenty neighbor's roofs, you're Jimmy the Helpful Thatcher. But if you eat the neighbor's daughter, you're Jimmy the Cannibal, and no amount of additional carpentry assistance will change that."

I found Fable 2 to be the best of the three. Gameplay systems were the most fun, character options the best, etc. The first one frankly had the major issue of gender locked character. Female protagonist should absolutely have been an option in that game.

I swear it seems like some of these harebrained schemes must be being created by people who want solar to fail so that they can point at the failure when the dumb idea doesn't work.

Yep, and cloning technology is getting ever closer to making identical genetic copies of an actual person, so it won't be too long in the grand scheme of things before you can in fact kill a person and restart them from birth on identical hardware with only the training data being different.

Yeah, prosecutorial and police discretion on what to arrest and prosecute is actually the very source of much discrimination. Making it so all crimes must be prosecuted is actually a good thing I think, because it would eliminate that discrimination where some people slide while others are harshly punished.

Having so many laws that you cannot follow them all, but it's not a problem because they're not enforced is a problem! It means that the government can come after anyone at any time. Forcing all breaches of law to be prosecuted to the full extent without being able to set priorities would thus require the removal of many laws, which would be good.

But as OP points out, someone will get that kidney eventually anyway. So the difference is that a different someone else gets to continue existing.