Alas! I fear we cannot stay here longer,' said Aragorn. He looked towards the mountains and held up his sword. 'Farewell, Gandalf!' he cried. 'Did I not say to you: if you pass the doors of Moria, beware? Alas that I spoke true! What hope have we without you?'
He turned to the Company. 'We must do without hope,' he said. 'At least we may yet be avenged. Let us gird ourselves and weep no more! Come! We have a long road, and much to do.'
So if sunlight hurts vampires, but moonlight doesn't (but moonlight is reflected sunlight) then does that mean the moon absorbs all holy light, and only reflects unholy light? Sunlight, we must assume, is composed of a random mix of all wavelengths and divinities of light. Therefore, can a vampire's reflection be seen if the vampire is illuminated by moonlight? Only if using a non-silver mirror? What about office fluorescent light, the most evil light of all?
Giant butterflies that hypnotize people and suck out their souls are a major element of China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station." Highly reccomended if you like fantasy.
Nostalgia marketing operates on roughly 20 to 30 year cycles, so we're dead center of 90s nostalgia. As the current decade wears on, there should be a gradual shift to 2000s era nostalgia (and another revival of the 80s, the most marketable decade). I can't say that looming war in the middle east doesn't give me those warm Bush 2 era vibes, though we are a bit early for it.
would the world be a better or worse place if everyone did what I’m about to do?
This is basically another formulation of Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative, sometimes phrased:
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
Which is itself basically another version of the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
I've heard advocates for the Platinum Rule as well: Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.
My point is that even the great thinkers of history, in conversation with each other over the millennia, have not gotten over the hump of morality being fundamentally subjective yet some lust for justice keeps us arguing in favor of some version of objective, universal morals.
One of the more helpful tools I've found is John Rawl's veil of ignorance, also called the original position argument. Basically, if you were redesigning society around your new rules, but had no idea which position you would hold in the new society (it's randomly assigned or impossible to predict, in the thought experiment), would you consider your rules successful and your society valid?
This tool allows for an objective evaluation of many subjective points of view, through statistical means.
All of these tools fail in a particular way though, which is that they individualize the search for ideal behavior. They ask: What morals would be best in a perfectly designed society, of which I will be the architect. Perhaps no individual is capable of devising a universal system of behavior?
Locked into their subjective experience of the world, how could any individual operating within such a system gain the conceptual distance necessary to redesign the whole? Rather, we are all shaped and attempt to shape society, aided and resisted by our resources and allies, in a chaotic and turbulent system that we are incapable of existing outside of. Even with a plan for a universal morality, how could you possibly implement it without contradiction?
Commandos to me is the start of a different lineage of real-time tactical stealth games, which goes on to include Desperados, Shadow Tactics, and Shadow Gambit (yes, most of those were made by the same team).
Outside of the OGRE-alikes (FO Tactics, FF Tactics, Disgea, and so on) some other options for tactical games that are a little different:
Nexus: The Jupiter Incident - sort of a 4X game mixed with tactics, or like Homeworld with a lot fewer units
Myth: The Fallen Lords (and sequels) - classic pre-Halo Bungie titles that mix RPG and strategy. Somewhat defining for the RTS genre too.
UFO: Aftershock and sequels - a series that tried to revive XCom before Firaxis rebooted it. Not as good, but pretty interesting and fun, a little easier than old school xcom but not as polished as the newer ones.
Cannon Fodder - a UK classic, very arcadey but very fun and lighter than all these other "serious" games
This is a good idea, but also working remote frees up time to meet new affinity groups.
Not to dump on people's relaxation strategies, but even the most introverted person can't survive on video games and gooning alone.
If you don't want or like hanging with coworkers, find a local bar to hang out at and meet some folks, go to a community board game night, join a choir, attend an anime viewing night, just do something to take initiative and meet some folks that like what you like.
"Pencil Break" was the hot shit for about a year in middle school. This was right on the edge of when mechanical pencils started to replace wooden ones in school (not completely, I'm sure kids still use wooden #2s.)
It was stupid, but so many people would take turns slapping pencils together to see which ones would break. Obviously brand new pencils out of the box snap the easiest, while worn down nubs are impossible to break. The school eventually banned it and briefly flirted with banning wooden pencils after parents and teachers complained that all the really dedicated students had no writing instruments left.
Trying to imagine objects in higher than 3 spatial dimensions.
Imagining 2 or more temporal dimensions.
Designing a system of governance that is fair to all constituents, physically realizable, and marketable enough to convince future constituents to follow it.
Waterfall: the car is "finished" at the end, but replace the engine with a huge roaring fire. The Dev team continues to put the engine fire out and build the engine for 3x the original project duration.
Agile: replace the cute scooter and bicycle with the partial car graphics from Waterfall, but mount a uniccyle seat and then a park bench on top of the partially built car.
AI: the whole thing should always be on fire, and have several spies from different countries taking pictures of it constantly.
I'm slightly on the young side for FMV games, but Jedi Knight and Command & Conquer were childhood staples that shaped my tastes in so many weird ways. JK is up there with the original trilogy for "Star Wars that is good and I care about." Katarn is easily the coolest Jedi.
Aside from the psychological/sociological side of it, PFAS and microolastics have been shown in some studies to reduce women's fertility and to mess with sperm. So environmental damage is also poisoning us and destroying our ability to procreate. Go team!
CodexArcanum @ codexarcanum @lemmy.dbzer0.com Posts 5Comments 279Joined 7 mo. ago