Nephil Thief

[Edit: redacted.]

Okay so maybe I shouldn't comment on the OP, but first off

Okay, so I'm just gonna throw this out here. I've never dated or even kissed a girl, and I'm about to turn 20 years old, and it frustrates me and makes me very lonely.

I hadn't kissed anyone until this year (I'm 26). Oh, and the person in question was a guy.

This society puts huge pressure on people to "find someone," and do so quickly, as a social status thing. And especially re hetero relationships. The truth IMO is that this doesn't work for everyone, and romance-as-social-status is unhealthy either way.

I was very lonely too. But after a while I got to the point where I had a day job and a few very close friends, and didn't feel like I needed a partner. I mean, it's really nice to be dating someone now, but for me a lot of it was social pressure that I had to get over.

That said, what you describe is... honestly, kind of heart-wrenching.

I was worried that I'd never get a girlfriend, so I created an imaginary girlfriend in hopes that it could fill the void. Her name is Katie, and I like to hug and kiss my pillow at night pretending that its my girlfriend. I text myself on the phone and have "her" respond back to me. I created an entire facebook page for "her" and I manage it all myself. I like to message this girl on facebook. I end up "texting" and facebooking this girl for hours on end everyday. Whenever I'm in my room alone, I'll talk to her, and pretend that I'm going on imaginary dates with her. I really love her, but sometimes I feel really sad because I know deep down inside she isn't real. But I still love her, and I love talking to her everyday. I just can't let her go now, and all the real women I used to have a crush on, I don't anymore. I can't fall in love with any other women now because I love "her." I don't know what I've done to myself. I've fallen in love with something that isn't there. Am I going insane?

"Hours on end" sounds like it might be interfering with your external life a bit. That kind of time adds up. I would suggest you seek professional help, if only in scaling back the time usage.

But on the other hand, I'm just going to put this out there: be careful. Trust your instincts. There are some really incompetent people in mental health practice, and I've met a bunch of them (and suffered at their hands).

In any case, seriously, best of luck. I hope things work out better for you.

That someone discovered, thousands of years ago, that they could preserve ideas in written symbols. I hope we never lose that. I know there's other things too - all the technology that keeps people like me alive, for instance - but writing is the one that really comes to the front, in my mind.

I'm currently wandering around the Wurm Pit in ZKR (somewhere in Morog's territory), and I'm not sure what to do with the cursed idol my character stole...

Err, recap: I walked in, slew lots of respawning Ooz Serpents and eventually a tentacled slime-beast at the center, wandered around a bit, and found a bunch of totems. There was an idol among the totems, so of course I stole it, and got cursed. Now I can't leave the dungeon, and get badly poisoned whenever I try.

What else is there, let's see:

- A little cavern in the northwest full of pretty mushrooms, which don't seem to do much.

- A pool of water with odd tranquilizing properties.

- Another group of totems in the southeast, which make me uneasy when I get near them... Unless I drink from the aforementioned pool first. But they don't do anything unusual if I blunder around them while tranquilized.

I could put the idol back, but I kind of want to find out more about this creepy little dungeon. What's the deal with this place?

Edit: the trick is to walk out through the wall behind the second set of totems. D'oh! Still interested in how this dungeon figures into the rest of the scenario though, the atmosphere of the place could be right out of Clark Ashton Smith.

@Goldengirl, thank you for your advice - it worked beautifully.

I'm not a nail technician or anything, but I've had mild success when it comes to doing my nails (until it comes to painting my dominant hand...)

 

I always do a base coat before anything else, and usually a top coat at the end for good measure. In my experience, the base coat is more important.

 

Make sure to wipe the excess off on the lip of the bottle, yes. Press the brush fat and wide on the base of the nail, right over the crescents. It should be wide enough to cover most of your nail. With each coat, try your best to evenly apply it to all parts of the nail. And do two or three coats, letting each one dry on that nail before moving to the next one.

Thank you! I'll give that a try next time.

(Though the Q-tip strategy I mentioned earlier, actually wound up looking surprisingly good...)

Other than that, I suppose just try to avoid doing too much with your hands, which is easier said than done.

Well yes. Especially for a computer person who likes to read a lot... :|

Again, I'm not talking about some vague, dehistoricized idea of rationality. I'm talking about the specific thesis of rationality (perhaps Rationality, to distinguish it) developed and forwarded by the Enlightenment, around the 1600's. Quite simply, they didn't know as much about the human brain as we do now, and so they developed some ideas that weren't quite accurate as a result.

Ugh. My apologies then, I wasn't understanding you at all.

Edit: also sorry for the 'splaining above. I need to work on that.

This essay is technically about Wikipedia and hacktivism, but it includes a long diversion and discussion of Dada. It certainly provides a lot more context and depth of analysis than the Wikipedia article itself. Check it out.

Thanks. No, really. I should stop relying on Wikipedia even for vague ideas of stuff.

I'm a little bit bothered by the author's accusations re: scientific rationalism; more on the basis that "acknowledging the connection" between said mindset and the horrors of the 20th and 21st centuries shouldn't necessarily involve throwing the whole thing out. I know I sound super pompous saying this, but IMO the dose really does make the poison.

Likewise the emphasis on subjectivity. That can cut both ways.

(Like with GamerGate. "How dare you tell me not to harrass people online! I was bullied incessantly as a child!" etc. etc.)

[Edit: bookmarked nonetheless though. That is a really cool blog.]

Now, that said, here's my two cents about this thread: reason and logic are specifically developed historical ideas. Logic was espoused by the Ancient Greeks as a mode of thought and philosophy, and revived in Western Europe with the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Reason also came out of the Enlightenment - the Age of Reason. These ideas, which I'm just going to lump under the term of reason or rationality, were used in specific ways in Western history to justify large movements and action. Republicanism, human rights, and scientific inquiry, but also the development of capitalism (which hinges on people operating under their own rational self-interest), the devaluation of emotion as something counter to reason (and the subsequent ascription of emotionality as feminine), and imperialism (countries acting in their own rational self-interest over irrational/non-progressive subjects). This legacy, inherited from the Enlightenment, has brought a lot of good and a lot of bad. Dadaism fits in with the radical Left because of a decision that the Enlightenment was more bad than good and thus we should burn the whole system down and start over.

Whether I agree with that latter depends heavily on how one defines "burn down the whole system." I can definitely see it re: Wikipedia at least. Some well-placed, persistent, and particularly comical vandalism, might have encouraged me to find better sources above for instance...

Re the former, I guess I'm viewing it less through the historic perspective, and more through the perspective of a would-be physics major re: causality and time's arrow. Some things in observable reality are invariant, in terms of how we interact with them. The block of wood I mentioned earlier will always be hard and inedible. Sure, there's no way to ascertain what the "real" nature of the block of wood is. But if I don't assume some level of invariance somewhere, then I could end up... well... trying to eat a block of wood.

I could talk all day about how the block of wood is just my perceptions. But at the end of the day, I would not eat it.

The idea of reason (from the Enlightenment) is pretty thoroughly debunked. People are inherently subjective, based on their upbringing, location, bodily experiences, etc. Psychologists have shown that certain fallacies and cognitive biases seem to be hardwired into our brains, not to mention the fact that logic and emotion are in no way separable or antagonistic. Capitalism has shown repeatedly that often times individuals don't act in their best interest (prioritizing immediate consumption over future consumption, being risk averse, etc.), and even when they do we still get bad things (e.g. monopolies). The idea that certain people are less rational, and therefore deserve what's coming to them, is widely recognized as pretty messed up. Nevertheless, reason still has a lot of staying power.

Agreed on that much; though I'd point out that the cognitive studies showing this themselves owe something to the Enlightenment, and I'm honestly not sure what (if anything) that implies.

First, take a look at this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada

Okay, Wikipedia article, yes. But I found it interesting. Anyway:

Dada, in addition to being anti-war, had political affinities with the radical left and was also anti-bourgeois.^[3]

...

Many Dadaists believed that the 'reason' and 'logic' of bourgeoisie capitalist society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos and irrationality. For example, George Grosz later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest "against this world of mutual destruction."^[8]

I've seen similar threads in current social commentary. And I don't think it's entirely wrong. OTOH I find it rather a depressing concept, because... well, logic and reason without ethics get you war. But logic and reason also get you things like indoor plumbing and public sewer systems.

If we're going for definitions: I guess I would, in this context, define reason as linear, causal thought. I do not see how humans can survive, in the long term or just day-to-day, without this. So yeah, I always get a bit uneasy reading such sentiments, be they from the radical-left Dadaists or from conservatives like G.K. Chesterton.

I mean... An orange may remain edible one day to the next. A block of wood will not. That is logic. Likewise applying paint to canvas to produce a painting, with the assumption that the paint will stick this time, as it did last time. So what does it actually constitute, to take a political stand against "logic and reason"? A stand against overuse of that mode of thinking, or use in the wrong context?

Or is this something completely different? As far as art, I've always considered art primarily emotional and intuitive, not conscious/logical/linear/whatever. Art can use logic, but it speaks to people's emotions. Was "art" just defined in an utterly different way, back before the days of the Dadaists?

I'm confused. Probably should have taken that Art Criticism course back at Amherst. Ah well.

...

I should note though, "rationality" is another matter as far as I'm concerned. Kind of personal, too, and I've been bitten by it a few times. IMO the concept of "rational" is less about logic, and more about espousing one arbitrary group of delusions while hypocritically condemning others.

(But whatever, what do I know. Last time I posted something "philosophical" I confused Locke with Hobbes.)

(Because I've got to post about something other than my messed up family life...)

...

Okay, I sometimes wear colored nail polish. But I have no idea how to actually get the stuff on properly.

Just apply it with the brush it comes with -> results in a hideously thick layer that never dries completely, and comes right off the next time I scrub my hands. Also gets all over my fingers, irritating my skin. (It doesn't help that my hands have a slight tremor, due to medical stuff outside my control.)

Apply it on top of clear nail polish -> looks better, but comes right off *after* it's dried.

Apply it on top of clear polish, then apply more clear stuff on top -> still comes right off.

The only halfway sensible approach I've found is to dip a Q-tip in the colored polish and dab it onto my nails very lightly. This results in a... rather interesting mottled look. But I'd prefer smooth and shiny.

Is there, like, any way whatsoever to do this one's self?

(No, search engines haven't turned up much. And I don't think I'll ask on Stack Overflow, thanks.)

Take two, I guess...

This morning my mom wanted to make a small donation to a certain organization - a writer's group, that rents a space in the city where people can write without interruption. One of her friends is a member of said group.

To do this she needed a Paypal account. She doesn't have one, because she doesn't manage finance stuff. She doesn't know how to set one up, because she doesn't understand computers and lacks the self-confidence to figure them out. She doesn't do online banking etc. at all; partly because she doesn't think she can grok it, partly because (let's be frank) my dad thinks she'd make a hash of it.

Anyway, she asked my dad if he could make the donation for her. He immediately started berating her about it, in an extremely critical and aggressive tone of voice.

The scary thing is, I thought he had a point.... and said so. Because my mom has been very nearly scammed, at times, and has trouble learning stuff - e.g. I teach her something about how to use a computer, and next week she asks me the same thing again, because she's so uncertain about it.

But I really shouldn't have done that. And I kind of realized that, as my dad continued lambasting her. I mean... there's being protective, and then there's gatekeeping, and this is the latter.

I apologized to my mom later. I'm still feeling conflicted. I want her to be more independent, but I don't want her to be conned. And, after years of antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and emotional abuse eroding her personality, I worry that's what would happen. I could try to educate her about online safety, but she always comes back to me a week later to ask the same questions. It's like she never has any certainty.

...

Later - just ~30 minutes ago - my dad started berating her again, over not cleaning a frying pan sufficiently.

Get this:

He had cleaned the pan, found it difficult to get clean, and left it in the sink to soak.

She had cleaned it, used it again; cleaned it, found it hard to clean, and left it to soak.

She had done exactly the same thing as him. And he berated her nonetheless, for not doing a sufficient job on the pan. Which was in the sink. Soaking. So that it could be cleaned completely later. As he had been doing.

When I pointed this out to him, he accused me of "fabricating things."

My mom and I both told him he had raised his voice at her unnecessarily. He insisted that he had not raised his voice. Cue much arguing, and him stomping around aggressively and glaring a lot, and insisting that he "just likes things to be kept clean."

...

Afterwards, I told him: "You know, I leave stuff lying around as much as Mom does, and you get on my case a lot less than on hers."

He just grunted. It didn't even seem to register with him.

He said something like, "My and your mother's differences about how much dirt we tolerate date back to before you were born."

Me: "You know, I'm also capable of cleaning stuff up. I'm the youngest here and all. You think something needs cleaning, you can always point it out to me."

Him: "Yeah, yeah."

In one ear, and out the other.

...

Not sure how I should proceed from here.

I'm thinking of showing my mom how to set up Paypal and online banking, so she can actually manage her finances. But her grasp of how to do this stuff safely just seems... incredibly tenuous. And that worries me a lot. I don't know how much is my own observation, and how much is my dad's bias.

...

I should probably call up the aforementioned hotline again, too. Thing is, I'm now a bit worried about that too. See, the person I got on the phone, when I called, was a woman and clearly an expert on this stuff.

The person my mom got, when she called, two months ago? Was a dude. And, from what she told me later, a glaringly obvious newbie, and not very sympathetic. And that seemed to further erode her confidence.

*sigh*

Why do things have to be this way. Why.

So I should probably should post an update on The Bees...

It got awful. Really awful, really fast. So awful I had to give up on it. The protagonist - yes, a worker bee - quickly becomes an enormous Mary Sue, reaching Kvothe-like levels of exceptionalism. Hurray.

I wanted this to be a good novel. I really did. But I can't recommend it at all.

@ADoS

My sympathies re the mental health stuff. What you're going through sounds horrendous. *hugs*

Wish I had advice on the living situation. My main thought is, try not to make major life decisions while you're on the emotional roller coaster. Not sure to what extent that's possible, but... yeah. Personally, decisions I made during times of anxiety, depression, or emotional desperation have not held me in good stead.

As far as nationalism allergies, you have my sympathies on that too. American nationalism these days terrifies me.

P.S. Oh hey, I'm also in Massachusetts.

P.P.S. Not sure if I should say this, but I feel like I kind of owe you one, for your advice in the thread re: my dad. You're an awesome person.

Update - Item Lore now also goes to 255. Updated checksum and link.

As for the scenario editor, well, we'll see...

Is this based on the old Win32/ code or the new SFML-based code? If it's the latter, I might be willing to accept a patch or pull request (provided it affects the editor only and not the game training dialog).

Old Win32 code. SFML codebase is still really iffy on Wine.

(Nothing personal, I just can't be bothered to set up a Windows environment.)

aka CBoE Character Editor with the stat limits removed.

https://drive.google...iew?usp=sharing

The dials go up to 255, instead of 20. This is easy to do in a hex editor (the stat constants are stored in one array towards the end of the executable), but I figured I'd put it up for everyone.

MD5 checksum is

b73e636c8aff2edcf48f5930d8481c12  SuperVillainEditor.exe

Watch this space - I'll be taking a whack at the Scenario Editor later, re NPC stats.

Edit: note, this is based on the open source CBoE char editor, so licensing is not exactly an issue. AFAIK anyway.

Edit 2: yeah, let's fix those code tags.

Edit 3: Minor update, Item Lore skill now also goes to 255. Updated checksum and link above.

Finally found a novel I can get into! It's called The Bees, it's written by one Laline Paul (whom I've never heard of), and it's basically Redwall meets 1984 by way of Dune. (And yes, the characters are in fact bees.) I'm not very far into it yet, but so far I love it.

@Randomizer: oh, don't worry, I get that things are complicated and imperfect. That's why I did say I'm opposed to censorship within certain limits.

(What I'm very much opposed to is allowing a bunch of angry trolls to harass critics into shutting up.)

The chilling effect trolls and harassment have on public discourse is a lesser evil than criminal punishments for internet trolls. It is also, to a degree, a necessary evil.

I really don't think that's true. Historically those who have been harassed have often been those with opinions ahead of their time.

As far as criminal punishments, if you're thinking that means "throw them in prison" then I agree - the punishment should fit the crime, and incarceration is currently broken in a lot of ways.

(Mind I'm also iffy on fines, which I consider not so viable in a society where money equates with personal survival. Not sure what other options that leaves... Point is though, holding people accountable for nastiness doesn't necessarily mean throwing the book at them.)

Entirely the opposite. I said I wouldn't take the precautions Sarkeesian has. Which is entirely meaningless, I'm hardly in a comparable position, but also what I said.

Ah sorry, I got that completely wrong. In that case, well... yeah, "hardly in a comparable position" definitely applies.

@nalyd

Lilith already covered "collateral damage", you get that both ways. Trolling and harassment also produce chilling effect.

(Which you BTW indirectly acknowledge, when you say that you wouldn't take the risks that Sarkeesian has. Those risks in speaking out, that you wouldn't take, constitute a chilling effect.)

IMO this could be viewed as related to the idea of a social contract. Way too much freedom of speech allows a tyranny of the majority - the public discourse version of Locke's "war of all against all," I guess*, where unpopular opinions are just shouted down. And that is a real problem from a social progress standpoint, because a lot of the things we've come to take for granted now were really unpopular way back when. See for instance Abolitionism in the 19th century US.

* Honestly I know barely anything about Locke, and I'm probably taking him way out of context. Whatever.

Edit: anyway, I can't make you think about things you don't want to think about. But I feel it's definitely worth doing from time to time.

Wow. Things kind of exploded while I was asleep.

@A River of Stones

I'm not really sure what to say.

I'll post more this evening (read: after work). Need time to come up with something coherent.

For now, I'd ask you to please think about relative degrees of harm. I think we can agree that "not being able to troll people on the internet" doesn't really compare with "being the target of a massive smear campaign", right?

You're saying that people should like a game even if it says things they don't like? That seems like the opposite of what you're saying.

 

There shouldn't be a line drawn regardless. At no point should any piece of art or media or anything be destroyed for alleged crimes against the fabric of society. The fabric of society will just have to deal with it like an adult.

I... uh... I think you misunderstood somebody somewhere.

As for not drawing a line ever: I really have to disagree. Some art can be propaganda. It's hard to know where to draw the line - I have some pretty conflicting ideas on that myself - but I think we can agree that, for instance, a game created by a neo-Nazi skinhead gang to actively promote racist violence is not really fit for the open market.

And when you then consider that a lot of racist violence is institutional, and originated by "ordinary people" as opposed to extremists, you kind of have to wonder what else might not be fit for the open market.

BTW: while I'm opposed to censorship within certain limits, I'm kind of a fan of self-restraint. Artists edit their work, they have to be critics of themselves. During that stage, there's plenty of room to stand back and say: "You know, maybe this really clever gimmick I'm about to do here is actually kind of awful."

I just don't really know at what point it would become worthy of destruction. Normally, promoting the most hardcore of crimes and unethical behavior would be a useful rubric. That said, all of Jeff's games, and many many genres in general, are built around killing - which is definitely a serious crime.

This has crossed my mind a lot lately. Yesterday I walked into the town library, and it hit me that about half the books were in some way related to murder.

IIRC there was a quote from Zizek, about how we give ourselves moral license to be thrilled by crimes, because they're committed in the context of a villain's deeds. From the opposing end, fantasy in general seems to suffer badly from "killing is okay when the hero does it." (Which the Exile games IIRC made fun of on several occasions.)

In any case, I'm not sure the impact is overwhelmingly negative, but I can't help but wonder if us as a society finding evil so darned thrilling is symptomatic of some deep pathology.

(OTOH: take a look at the types of fans that G_m_rG_t_ brought out of the woodwork. And IIRC there have been some findings to the effect that violent video games desensitize people to violence in their own lives. Don't quote me on that latter, though.)

...

Finally: I have to note that, one of the things I've repeatedly observed is that human society seems to revolve around Who Can Kick Whose A**. I could probably write a couple essays about this, how I've completely failed to extricate myself from it, why I think there's too much of it, and why maybe we should look for better concepts of superiority.

Anyway, I will posit that the overuse of violent notions of superiority is a social problem; and that a lot of video games fit into it, with winning conditions achieved by use of force, etc.

'course I might just be talking rubbish. Whatever.

Discuss? Okay, sure. Though I'm admittedly somewhat saddened to see this discussion arrive on Spiderweb, especially given the viewpoint that Mr. Vogel presents.

But once again, it's still just glyphs on a screen.

And the Communist Manifesto was just glyphs on paper.

Words, images, videos, sound clips, 3D virtual worlds - whatever - these things have power. We assign meaning to them in our heads, so they affect how we think. I mean, you read this, and the words go through your head, right? You think responses to it, and those are in words. Most of our thinking is linguistic.

Video games are mostly considered "low art", as opposed to high-impact stuff like Shakespeare and Chaucer, but they are also common parlance. And IMO that makes them just as important as the snobby stuff. Don't tell me that The Matrix didn't influence Western (and global) culture, for instance.

I would therefore submit that popular artists - including video game artists - should at least a little responsibility for their art. Not that they should always agree with so-and-so leftie perspective, but that they should try to be aware of what they're putting out into the public memesphere, and whether it is actually sensible stuff by the standards of their worldview.

You don't have to agree with the Anita Sarkeesians of the world (though, honestly, what I've seen from her makes a lot of sense). But I don't think it's correct to say that video games are just glyphs on a screen, as if that absolves them of any significance deeper than their entertainment value. Not wrong, not amoral, not irresponsible, but incorrect - from what I know, humans don't work that way.

Of course that is ultimately my opinion, and I'm a firm believer in that famous old X-files quote (speaking of media influence): "The truth is out there." (And may be utterly different from what I believe right now.)

I'm pretty sure I'm mostly right about this, though.

[Note: "you" in the above doesn't necessarily refer to any of the posters.]

...

Edit:

I should note that I've played rather few video games in my life. Spiderweb stuff, a bit of Wing Commander/Privateer/Vega Strike/etc., and quite a lot of various Angband variants. I tend to stick with what I know, and mostly lean towards books for novel fiction experiences. As such I'm probably not qualified to comment re indie games.

Also, it's funny to note that of the above, Spidweb games are probably the least ridden with racist baggage. (IMO anyway.)

@Fireball Fodder

You know, I don't have a working copy of E2 on hand, but I think that might be a deliberate touch. The kind of "crimes" that get people Exiled are crimes against the Empire's silly social standards. Falling outside the Empire's gender norms would probably qualify, and then some.

(Welcome to the Spiderweb forums. Please leave your normative social standards at the door.)

I figured Feoderic was male but androgynous looking. Might be bias, dunno.

(Actually, I always thought his graphic looked like Michael Jackson...)