jjjalljs

@jjjalljs@ttrpg.network

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Colorado Republican Brutally Grilled By Local News Anchor: ‘Why Is Abortion Good For Your Girlfriend? Bad For Other Women?’ ( www.mediaite.com )

Colorado congressional candidate and sitting State Rep. Richard Holtorf (R) received a tough grilling this week at the hands of local 9News anchor Kyle Clark over his apparent hypocrisy when it comes to abortion rights....

jjjalljs ,

In groups to protect, outgroups to bind. That seems to be all conservatism is.

jjjalljs ,

I mean I assume they had like metal detectors and stuff. You probably can't pay $500 to go to a fancy dinner and just shoot a supreme Court justice. Right? Someone would've already done that.

jjjalljs ,

Normally I'd say something like "nothing will change until conservatives suffer personally", but lots of kids have been shot and that didn't do it. So I don't know man.

Florida Governor DeSantis rejects climate change rationale for record-breaking rain ( wapo.st )

At this point, it's fairly common for significant rainfall events to have attribution studies showing that they're a result of the higher temperatures that fossil fuel burning has given us. Whether or not we end up with one for this particular event, it's something that we know will be more common if we keep on extracting and...

jjjalljs ,

DeSantis is a dangerous idiot that should be removed from power.

jjjalljs ,

The main problem is it can't be trivially based on income. You have to figure out how to tax things like stock and "I got a low interest loan from the bank". Things that aren't a check your employer sends you every two weeks.

Probably taxing unrealized gains would do it? If you own stock that's worth a shit load of money, you pay something.

I think people also use stock as a collateral to get loans. That should probably not be a thing you can do to avoid taxes.

Also there probably shouldn't be a marriage tax break. I'm pretty sure that came from some rich asshole who didn't want to pay taxes, so he said half his income was his stay at home wife's to lower his burden. There's a book "the whiteness of wealth" that talks about this, and how it tends to help white people more than anyone else.

jjjalljs ,

I think you can change stuff around the legal definition of marriage and family separately from the tax break part. I'm not an expert, but if you're interested in this sort of thing I recommend "The Whiteness of Wealth": https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/591671/the-whiteness-of-wealth-by-dorothy-a-brown/

From another article about it: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/05/17/us-taxes-dorothy-brown

Marriage puts the issue front and center, she says. Most married Americans receive a tax cut, “but there is a significant minority of Americans, when they get married, they pay higher taxes,” she says. “Well, as it turns out, if you look at Census Bureau data, which actually does provide this information by race, you see white married couples are more likely to contribute income … that leads to them getting a tax cut.”

However, Black married couples are more likely to contribute income to the household in a way that leads to higher taxes, Brown says.

For example, “let's say someone makes $50,000. As a single person, their taxes are going to be a certain rate,” she says. “But as a married person with a single wage earner, that $50,000 household is going to wind up paying less taxes than that single wage earner had they remained single.”

Census Bureau data shows single wage-earning families are more likely to be white than Black, she says. For example, many of these types of single wage-earning families consist of a working white man — a person who statistically holds a higher paying job than any other identity, she says — and a woman who stays home with the children.

“On the other hand, the couple where both spouses are working full time and contributing roughly equal amounts to household income, they don't get a tax cut,” she says. “That couple is more likely to be Black than white.

jjjalljs ,

Conservatives have bad ideas about nearly everything. They should under no circumstances be allowed to have any power. I'd even say they're an existential threat to the US and the rest of humanity.

It's far past time to stop treating them as just folks with a different opinion. This is not "oh well they wanted to paint the bedroom walls green and I wanted blue."

Someone announcing themselves a conservative should be taken as a declaration of a threat. Removing them from power is self defense.

jjjalljs ,

What word would you prefer? I considered "Republicans" but that doesn't catch people outside the US. "Contemporary Republicans or people who would vote for them" isn't very catchy

jjjalljs ,

Is it the "only Democrats have agency" thing? Democrats are responsible for their choices but Republicans, they're just like a fire that burns man it doesn't know what it's doing.

jjjalljs ,

Friend of mine never got their driver's license. They live in NYC and don't need one. They also were concerned about safety- they have ADHD and are prone to inattentiveness, and they didn't want to be driving a car when that manifested.

I have a license but I also live in NYC. I don't need to drive. It's pretty great. It's expensive in time money space and externalized costs, and it's often less effective than just taking public transit.

Unfortunately most of the US is resistant to investing in mass transit and density, so it's going to be shitty car-first spaces for a while.

jjjalljs ,

Yeah I'm always annoyed when I find it. I usually just want the official docs or SO, but seo garbage rises to the top.

jjjalljs ,

A lot of people are operating on a mostly emotional level. The words are after-the-fact justifications for what they feel. And most of what they feel is ingroups to protect, outgroups to bind.

jjjalljs ,

I do it to the subway doors sometimes. At least once it made someone laugh pretty hard, which was nice.

jjjalljs ,

NK jemisin is great but that's not the topic 🤔

jjjalljs ,

I really liked The Dispossessed.

The ones who walk away from omelas is a classic and very short.

The wizard of Earth Sea books are pretty okay.

jjjalljs ,

A verbal secret passphrase to identify yourself to your family would be pretty smart.

jjjalljs ,

Most of the subway smells fine.

jjjalljs ,

Trump appears to be fundraising off of his hush-money pre-sentencing interview on Monday

Republicans are stupid. Unfortunately, they're not quite too stupid to live. They might drag us all down with them, though.

jjjalljs ,

The intersection of "people pleaser" + "inability to accurately imagine the future" + "low social energy" seems to be a vicious and common hell for some folks. They say yes to invites because they want to please the other person, and imagine they'll totally be up for it, but when the moment arrives they don't have the juice for it.

There's probably other ways to have this problem, but that's how a few friends have described it.

jjjalljs ,

The rational definition of conservatism is the maintaining of the status quo. No radical change. Don’t rock the boat.

As a political philosophy, it’s boring. It’s safe. Just keep things the way they are.

If the way things are is cruel and unjust, then what is it to fight to maintain that state of things?

Outside of a utopia, "keep things as they are" is unlikely to be the highest of moral grounds.

jjjalljs ,

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44049/a-man-said-to-the-universe

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

Written in like the 1890s. So straight forward. Feels modern.

jjjalljs ,

I know pre 1.x.x is kind of a wild west for versioning but uh is there any logic to the version numbers here? I'd think a new feature would be a minor version bump, not patch

jjjalljs ,

Wow those people are scum bags. They call it "so called climate change"

jjjalljs ,

You have discovered sturgeon's law. 90% of everything is crap. Judging a medium or genre by the crap isn't useful.

jjjalljs ,

Money would like immediately be reinvented.

"I need my window repaired but I don't know how to do it"

"I can repair windows but I need someone to help my sick dog"

"I can diagnose animals but I need someone to translate Spanish".

"I can translate Spanish but I need someone to deliver this package "

They're not going to all line up and do a series of trades. Someone's going to be like "what if I give you a token, and we all agree that token is worth work? Then you can take that token to anyone*

jjjalljs ,

The person I replied to literally said "the rest by bartering or agreement". I guess you could stir money is an agreement but that's not what I took from their message

Also how are you going to solve the scenario I provided?

jjjalljs ,

I don't understand how that's going to solve the scenario I described.

There's stuff I can do but don't want to. There's stuff I would do in exchange for something. But once that "something" isn't what you have, the reasons for currency become apparent.

jjjalljs ,

I'm not trying to be obtuse but I'm not following.

In the example I gave, is the guy going to repair the window out of the goodness of his heart?

jjjalljs ,

So if someone asks me to do a thing for them, I can only do it when working in an official professional capacity, or through unofficial favor exchanges?

jjjalljs ,

That "whatever you want" is immediately going to turn into tokens, which are currency. That's almost certainly how it happened originally.

"I'll do this for you if you give me some shiny rocks, then I can go to the city and trade them for a cool hat" or whatever.

jjjalljs ,

Because I don't want anything you have, but trying to build a whole barter chain where we trade everything in sequence until everyone gets something they want is wildly impractical. As described in my first example.

And yes, today I pay a dude money and he does the thing. I don't have to clean his gutters so he'll agree to knit me a sweater.

Why do you think money came to be originally?

jjjalljs ,

If you go all the way to the start of this thread, it began with "Money shouldn’t exist. Hope that helps!". So that's what I'm arguing against. Money will be reinvented because it serves a very real purpose.

Also if something happens 1% of the time you still have to account for it.

And "I can do the thing. I don't really enjoy it. For some incentive, I'll do it" is more than 1% of what's happening in life.

jjjalljs ,

Money predates capitalism. The reasons why it was originally invented remain. Once your favors have any complexity at all, someone's going to have the obvious idea of "why don't we abstract this?"

jjjalljs ,

I save scum sometimes. I did a lot in bg3 because the skill checks have such a big random factor.

I don't save scum in my favorite rogue like (Crawl: stone soup). Most of the time losing feels like my fault, and not just random.

jjjalljs ,

They're probably hoping to not hire a replacement at all

jjjalljs ,

I liked The Dispossessed a lot, aside from one scene. The book overall really made me think.

jjjalljs ,

It's difficult to compromise with people who want to kill you for what you are.

jjjalljs ,

In groups to protect, outgroups to bind.

jjjalljs ,

Tinder and the other apps are pretty bad. Partly because they want to make money, not matches.

But also partly because the users suck at using them. People are like "I want interesting conversation" but reply with nothing but "lol". Come in my dude put some work in.

jjjalljs ,

Somehow I hadn't even considered fake profiles. I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse about the situation.

jjjalljs ,

Weirdly, none of them really focus on the non-monogamous market. There's a section of likely long term users.

jjjalljs ,

A lot of the polyamorous people I know are on the apps or have tried them, but aren't happy with them. Partly because the apps generally aren't good, and partly because you end up with a lot of wasted "your desired relationship structure isn't what I want" matches.

OkCupid has some support for it, but that app hasn't been good or interesting in years. Tinder lets you pick your relationship type, but you can't like filter by it. Soneone threatened to "report me" on Hinge (I think?) for wanting a non monogamous relationship. Maybe they thought relationship anarchy was something dangerous.

This might be different outside of NYC, where I am.

jjjalljs ,

They should probably limit how many swipes you get instead of having your swipes go into the void.

jjjalljs ,

the problem with flubbing is the dishonesty and unilateralness. You can play a different system that doesn't create the situation your players don't like so easily.

Or honestly just import Fate points and "succeed at a cost" into dnd. The dice system still sucks but that would help tremendously.

jjjalljs ,

Some games have this built in and you don't have to fudge it.

Fate, my go to example, has important but simple rules around losing a conflict.

At any point before someone tries to take you out, you can concede. That's a player action and not a character action. If you concede, you get a say in what happens to your character. That's where you as a group say "maybe they stab me but leave me for dead in the confusion" or "maybe the orcs take me prisoner so you all can rescue me next week". Whatever the group decides is cool goes, but you get a say. You make this call before the dice are rolled. You also get one or more fate points, which is nice.

If you instead push your luck and let them roll, and their attack is more than you can take, you're done. The rest of the table decides what happens but you don't get a say beyond what was agreed to in session 0.

This would also be pretty easy to import into DND or most other systems.

jjjalljs ,

Inspiration in raw DND is extremely under baked. Bg3 expanded it a little by letting you hold more than one, and actually using it. Most tables I've played at don't use it, or it's pretty rare.

Fate by default starts you with 3 fate points per session. It expects you to use them and has clear ways of getting more.

I really tried to get my old DND group to use then more, but it didn't really click. I wasn't a good fit for that group really.

jjjalljs ,

I got down voted for saying this elsewhere, but to my mind there's a huge difference between the GM unilaterally changing the rules, and the group deciding.

Scenario: the goblin rolls a crit that'll kill the wizard. This is the first scene of the night.

Option A: GM decides in secret that's no good and says it's a regular hit.

Option B: GM says "I think it wouldn't be fun for the wizard to just die now. How about he's knocked out instead?". The players can then decide if they want that or would prefer the death.

Some people might legitimately prefer A, but I don't really want the GM to just decide stuff like that. I also make decisions based on the rules, and if they just change based on the GM's whims that's really frustrating and disorienting.

There's also option C where this kind of thing is baked into the rules. And/or deciding in session 0 what rules you're going to change.

jjjalljs ,

For your example, I'd probably still ask if the players wanted me to let the dice decide or not before rolling. My players once had a clever idea of setting some poison traps and using earthbind to deal with a wyvern. The thing made all of its saves and nothing worked. I could've lied, but we'd already agreed to openly roll and abide by it. Would lying have made it better? Maybe. The game carried on and that arc had a thrilling climax later.

Alternatively, if we'd been playing a game that has a "succeed with a cost" / "fail forward" mechanic it could have been satisfying. D&D and close relatives are especially prone to disappointment because of how random and binary they tend to be.

Anyway. All of this I think it reveals a difference in how RPGs are enjoyed by different people.

On one hand, there's going for immersion. The player wants to be in the world, be in the character, and feel everything there. It's very zoomed in.

On the other, where I hang out, it's more like a writer's room. I'm interested in telling a cool story, but I'm not really pretending to "be" my character. My character doesn't want a rival wizard to show up, but I as a player think that's interesting (and maybe want the fate point, too) so I can suggest that my "Rivals in the Academy" trouble kicks in now. I enjoy when I can invoke an aspect and shift the result in my favor, or when I can propose a clever way I can get what I want at a cost.

Neither's better or worse than the other, so long as everyone's on the same page. It can be bad if half the table wants to go full immersion and just talk in character for two hours and the other half doesn't.

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