Iro
@Iro

Getting a headstart by collating this as time progresses rather than trying to go through a backlog way at the end of the year, though this in no way means I'll keep up with doing this each month. Going to be missing a lot of good posts (and probably including the same people a fair bit) simply as a consequence of what crosses my timeline.

<== July 2024

ask on generosity by @ckie, @shel

Yes millions of people don't have flush toilets and you're fortunate enough to have a flush toilet. Don't beat yourself up for it just appreciate it and then budget to see what you can afford to share ideally via like, Normal Methods.

Making my game more cool, without being boring by @MOKKA

Solution A:
Restrict the number of Dash-punches players can perform in a row.
NO! This is boring! What do you want me to implement next? A Stamina bar?

the goldeneye effect by @unboxedcereal, @amaranth-witch

Most things have strengths and weaknesses, and if something's strengths outweigh its weaknesses for you, then you'll probably like it, and that's okay! Nothing needs to be perfect to be loved. But that's not the same as being great in every category.

"On Justice Sensitivity and Autism" and "Fairness, or: Why That One Bit of Hogfather Still Annihilates Me" by @shel, @Daeren

I only changed after the long, slow erosion of repeatedly being told, truthfully, that there are things outside of my control, and my family and friends bearing my snarling retorts that I was fully aware of that - that was what bothered me. I wanted that control, to Fix It, because to bear witness to something horrible I was powerless to change was like feeling a piece of me rot.

snood by @cathoderaydude, @belarius

I remember Snood being a ubiquitous background hum among PC and Mac users in the early 2000s. Many people I knew had it on their "software to install when building a new rig" master list. The GBA footage is pretty misleading, honestly, because it was Snood on PC (try it for yourself!) that wormed its way into the brains of a generation.

Deep Dungeon Madou Senki - Review by @elephant-parade

Less kind is the random encounter system, which works off of real time. Yes: while you're standing around double-checking your map, the game is ticking down toward the next fight. And don't be fooled into thinking START pauses the game, like I was: it actually just mutes the music. (SELECT pauses the game but hides the screen, so no cheating!)

Important social skill: Inside Thoughts and holding your tongue by @shel

It's important to know when a thought you had, whether valid or not, would just be better kept to yourself than shared. A lot of conflicts are caused by people just not knowing when to hold their tongue and shut up. White people especially struggle with this, in my observations, whereas a lot of Black people learn quickly due to racism that everything they say will be misconstrued and used against them.

Super Mario 64 Has Aged by @pangburn

There is a reason that modern games such as Pseudoregalia hearken back to it: by paying respects to one's mechanical forebears, you contrast yourself against your contemporaries (ignoring the glut of nostalgia-bait indies lol) and recall a context that produced creatively explosive works. The '90s are so in right now; why are we scared to admit that Super Mario 64 is a product of its time?

Reflections of a history of being Black on the Internet by @chimerror

And then, similar issues of anti-Blackness happened there, which was actually part of (as I understand it) which led to the reason why Cohost was made. I don't have the knowledge to relitigate that, and to be honest, I'd rather not, because I want to hope in people. But then it happened again here. And again and again...

Zambot 3 is an empty symbol of justice that I want to buy one day. by @highimpactsex

Unlike the Gundams which all feel like a blur to me because they're concrete and realized symbols of war, the empty and artificial content of the Zambot 3 fascinates me. It has tried to commodify the spirit of super robot shows, but there is nothing mythic inside this piece of plastic. And yet, this abyss of nothingness allows me to reflect on the futility of heroic sacrifice.

Ofc POC doing anything on the Internet will get racism by @AtFruitBat

And then God forbid you try to express sadness, or disgust, or anger that other people behave badly towards you in public because they are racist. Then supposed allies will suggest you are causing "drama", or that you must want be complaining just because you enjoy being a victim.

Cohost So White: A Comprehensive Record of the Matter of Race on Cohost.org by @alyaza, Et al.

For all its faults, Cohost is also still far and away more visible minority friendly than Twitter, Bluesky, much of the Fediverse, etc. But I think it is also true that we agree with the cynics in a few places. Far too often it seems like the only recourse is to make a big fuss—not to go through the official channels—and if the website is to get better then it must fix this aggressively. It is completely unsustainable for this to be the main way to get results.

How To Spot Fake Monks by @audriserat

1) Real monks will never sell you things
Whether it's physical items such as beads and holy water, or a 'service' like a cleansing ritual and empowerment, they will not ask for money. Donations could be welcome depending on the school/vihara (e.g. Mahayana doesn't see money as evil). They should be giving blessings without expecting anything in return.

self-hosting is exciting by @exodrifter

Aside from the price and logistics, there are also privacy concerns I have. So, I have been looking into self-hosted alternatives and found myself with some potential solutions for the things that I use. Recently, I remembered that I could self-host my own server without exposing it to the public internet by using a VPN.

rich neighborhoods sometimes manage to make themselves into completely resident-hostile environments purely with road and setback width by @lmichet

Why do you need a center turning lane on a road that is deep in a residential neighborhood, with side streets full of houses too? Why do you need a front yard on each house so deep, it could hold ANOTHER ROAD? I feel safer in the parts of LA where the streets are narrow and lined with apartment buildings, because the visual noise and high stakes obstacles make drivers go like 5x slower.

Slow Fire by @crushed

You don't know what that means. Jurassic Park, you assume, means Jurassic Park. They're a devil of a thing, names. But why is "HD" separate? You remember there was that 3D conversion a while back in theaters that was actually pretty cool. But why are these options? Is the unadorned first option somehow a standard definition transfer? Don't HD versions of films just get called... what they're called?

WHAT TO DO IF YOU'RE NEURODIVERGENT AND YOU ACCIDENTALLY DID A BIGOTRY by @NireBryce, @numberonebug, @pieartsy

DON'T try to justify your mistake by explaining you're neurodivergent, and/or what the neurodivergency is. Even if you didn't intend it this way, this makes it sound like you're using your neurodivergency as an excuse for what you did. It also throws people with the same neurodivergency under the bus, by implying that people with your neurodivergency are either naturally bigoted, or are excused from bigotry because "they can't help it".

Tracing the Blades in the Dark lineage by @Jama

The goal was to try to trace the mechanical inspiration for one of the most popular Indie TTRPGs on the market today, and see how it was influenced by those that came before. What weird niches get turned up and how much blood from the titans of the medium is pumping through these veins.

On Dallas by @Meinberg

Now, where Dallas becomes truly interesting, at least to me, is when the narrative is added back in. Unlike every other game of its era, it is not a Fantasy or a Science-Fiction or a Western or a historical game, it is a contemporary drama, which is not a genre that is not often explored even today. This comes with a much lower emphasis on action, and a much stronger emphasis on interpersonal dynamics.

White Supremacy Culture by @TV-MA, @Sumac, @dismallyOriented

This happens a lot with racism, but it is a ego-protection mechanism that can get wielded against any kind of criticism. You can see this in relationships too, if you try to raise criticism against some behavior that's causing problems, and the response is always shrinking and foregrounding their own pain, without ever engaging with the root problem. It is you, the critic, who is the problem - can't you see how you're hurting me?

Working Professional Adult apps that help me as a freelance writer with adhd by @easrng, @NoelBWrites

Listen, listen: do NOT subscribe to that newsletter. If you, against my advice and your own instincts, subscribe to that newsletter, then go to your inbox immediately to download the free book/get the discount code and unsubscribe right then and there. Do not leave it for later because "it's fine," it's not going to be fine, it's going to be four months later and your inbox will be at 232552 unread messages and you'll be avoiding it because it's overwhelming and makes you anxious.

Using CSS to make Discord Better by @Kayin

While nothing will fully stop the rapid enshittification of discord (and frankly other platforms), but we can mend the papercuts.
... At least on desktop.

Some chinese characters are cursed by @wiredaemon, @ratherforky

[...]my only guess is that they must have thought this would be too confusing, and so just chopped of a bit from that, keeping the pure 工 part and shortening the ㇏ of 又 to ス, which is insane.
又 - (0.5 * ㇏) = ス ???

Have you heard of this guy? by @MrBehemo, @austin

Sports, music, film, comedy... a lot of these areas have folks who went from prestigae press, unremembered amateur participation, even distant and boring academia to running award shows and festivals, promoting album listening parties and boxing matches, and standing hand in hand with the latest and greatest in non-endemic sponsors and whichever just-barely-still-cool entertainer would be willing to go on stage.

thread on complexity in discourse by @Partheniad, @amaranth-witch, @shel

Since in the wide open internet possibly anyone with zero knowledge might misunderstand your post and force you back to arguing about basics while they insult you and demean you or even try to cancel you then everyone gets extremely defensive off the bat and it gets really tedious reading the same caveats and baseline axioms reasserted over and over and over in every sentence.

What changed in the '20s? Defining Generative AI so that we can oppose it by @arborelia

There is a noticeable change in the generative AI technologies that are currently ruining the world, and if we can describe what changed, we can describe how to oppose them.

Extensive notes on Cuban environmental and farming practices by @alyaza

By the 1980s a movement toward sustainable farming practices had begun among Cuban researchers; state research, meanwhile, yielded biological control agents to manage pests and "agroecologically-compatible techniques and tools" for farmers to make use of. The economic crisis of the 1990s ultimately brought urgency, widespread implementation of, and widespread conversion to agroecological farming methods.

realism in fiction, or how realism is fake by @spookydichotomy, @eatthepen, @teioh

But rarely do people look at a piece of media and say, as an example, "wow, that depiction of community kindness and solidarity is so realistic." Why not? People talk about making a more "gritty" or "realistic" portrayal of xyz genre or trope or story archetype, and almost always it means more conflict, more oppression, more violence, and more brutality. Do we live in a world where such things exist? Of course we do. But must our lives be solely defined by it? No, of course not.

Are you expecting someone to start a conversation out of nowhere, or are you expecting them to continue a conversation you started? by @Bigg

Another observation: like a lot of things with social media, as far as getting comments goes I think you get back what you put in. Which is to say: how many comments are you leaving on other creators' works? How much are you really engaging with the other people who use the platform you're putting your work on?

A black man's surprisingly passionate defense of being American by @smuonsneutrino

I'm just so fucking tired of Americans (esp. White Americans, capital-W White, the cultural group, as opposed to like, European immigrants to the US) acting like doomers who need to feel Extra Layers Of American White Guilt. No you don't. Every country is like this, America is just big and easy to make fun of. You do not need to feel guilty for the shitty things your govenment does unless you are currently supporting those things or have recently supported those things.

A Ramble on the transactional nature of social media by @MOKKA

Suddenly, sharing isn't just something people do, because they found something interesting, and thought that others in their social circles might find it interesting as well, it becomes a low-level tool of supporting those whose work you enjoy.

We're always fighting by @Science, @fools-pyrite

Violence allows the RPG author and referee to order the world in a simple, legible way the same as it allows the bureaucrat. The violent "verbs" players have access to can be much simpler and broader than the non-violent "verbs", because they don't require a deep understanding of the situation at hand.

the era of computer tinkering by @hextheplanet

Most people I knew at this time had mini towers of the Gateway 2000, or eMachines, or Compaq varieties. By and large most of this sucked? Like, they worked, but not reliably. Most of the install discs contained manufacturer-specific apps that added like 10 shortcuts to your desktop for free trials, toolbars that got added to the bottom of your screen for serving more ads, and all of this was done to computers that didn't really have those resources to spare in the first place!

A Brief History of Marvel RPGs by @covok, @amaranth-witch

The game sold out multiple time and had many different print runs. It was definitely a success. Yet, after only three books, it was canceled due to not selling as well as D&D or a regular comic book. Why is this a canary in the coal mine? Well, Marvel having unrealistic expectations for sales in a hobby where most designers make games in their spare time and there are only a handful of real businesses is likely to become a trend.

Bunny History Crash Course by @SunshineMoon

1966: There is no Playboy branch in Japan, so a nightclub called ゴールデン月世界 ("Golden Moon World", seems to be the translation?) decides if their region isn't being paid attention to, they can just do it themselves, and right from its opening includes 15 staff bunnygirls (apparently paid 4 times the salary of an office worker of the time).

My strange Final Fantasy II adventure by @sylvie

Ultimately, the scariness of the kittens lead me to overprepare. To maximize my chances of avoiding ambushes and dodging their instant death attacks, I did some Agility and Evasion grinding. Additionally, all four of my characters had some of the best armor and weapons available, and nearly full resistance coverage against status effects. The result was that on my winning run, the instadeath kittens were the only real threat in the entire final dungeon.

thread on D&D and information work by @Clouder, @Scampir, @amaranth-witch

Well, a lot of D&D's approach-ability at the beginning comes it being an assemblage (a collection of tools, but here meaning a collection of symbols) that people are familiar. People generally know what a wizard is, what a knight is, what a goblin or troll or dragon is. It's something they can already imagine and it's not too hard to make that fantastic to boot. Goblins and Trolls and giant rats are low level monsters in 5e so that players can encounter the familiar as they begin to understand the game as it is.

Brazilian Boosting by @Bigg, et al.

In the wake of Elon's latest big baby boom-boom, literally every Brazilian creator online is having to rebuild a massive chunk of their audience (or risk a 10k/day fine for accessing Twitter via VPN). This stinks!

ask on writing by @NekoRaita, @ninecoffees, @amaranth-witch

While it's not possible in any world I know to magically make yourself a good writer through the power of affirmation and repetition alone, the more you repeat to yourself that you are a bad writer, the more you will be a bad writer. Not because you never develop skills, but because you foster dead angles and bad habits and other ways that you'll never see the improvement in your writing, because you're busily reinforcing that you are a bad writer and all this reliance on good writing is a mistake.


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