#beancounter

[redeyesandchilifries]

ACCOUNTANTS

[socknerd]

Lmfao at the results of the first negotation meeting for payrise etc. Despite the fact that they're fucking HEMORRHAGING workers, they don't wanna raise pay to even in level with inflation. 🙃🙃🙃 We'll see how it continues I suppose.

[velvetaine]

The only social platform that has any competition to Tumblr for me is reddit because my downvotes are like little kisses from Athena

[pamprinninja]

“We constantly battle the sins of the fathers, thought Guilliman. That is no less true on an eternal scale than it is within the history of a single world. We suffer because of those that have gone before.

Heaving a sigh, the Primarch resumed the protracted process of correcting his unruly VLOOKUP.”

- Guy Haley, Dark Imperium

It is kind of funny that the entire fandom have agreed that Perturabo’s nickname is “Perty”, when he in canon has a perfectly fine nickname.

[buckevantommy]

i was blogging about destiel for 4 years after they sent the gay angel to superhell and didn’t let the bi guy reciprocate and instead gave him a disrespectable death and told him a shitty hellish heaven was what he deserved when he just wanted to live as one last fuck you to queer rep for men 30+. 

i’ve been here before. i’m not going anywhere. 

i came here for ongoing positive queer rep for men 30+ and i’m staying bc i know when the show don’t got me, fandom does. fandom always has, bc these stories mean more to us than any beancounter or wayward showrunner could care to comprehend. i’m staying to create and to continue celebrating everything bi buck and gay tommy and bucktommy gave us (up to a point). 

this is not where their story ends. this is where fandom takes custodianship and gives the characters and their journey together everything denied to them by tptb. we honour them, and heal ourselves, by carrying on their story the way they deserve, and the way we deserve.

that is why fandom exists; to fix what was so carelessly broken and to keep stories alive that deserve to be kept with care and understanding. 

i appreciate every one of you who has shared joy and positivity for these beautiful queer men and their forever kind of love, and just know that i will continue doing the same.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Homebrew Mechanic: Fixing D&D’s Gameplay Loop with Item Degradation

Normally I have snappy titles for these, but in this case I wanted to be super upfront with what I was getting you all into. 

Some people are not going to like the idea of introducing item degradation into the game, and they’re ABSOLUTELY right to be hesitant. Just about every attempt I’ve seen (includig both RAW versions from previous editions, examples from videogames, and those I’ve put together myself in the past) have been horribly clunky exercises in beancounting that only ever existed to needlessly slow down gameplay for the sake of joyless realism. 

I’ve come at it from another angle however, but to explain we’re going to need to get into some game design talk. 

The basic gameplay loop of D&D is supposed to be: 

Seeking adventure leads you to face challenges

Overcoming challenges leads you to rewards

Rewards Help you get stronger 

Getting stronger allows you to seek tougher adventures

After a while this system starts to break down specifically with regards to gold as a method of reward. Even if you’re the smart sort of DM who flouts the rules and gives their party access to a magic item shop, there’s an increasingly limited number of things to spend gold on, leading to parties acquiring sizable hordes of riches early on in their adventuring career, completely eliminating the desire to accept quests that pay out in gold in one form or another. This is a pretty significant flaw because adventures that centre around acquisition of riches ( treasure hunts, bounty missions, busywork for rich patrons that will inevitably betray you) are foundational to storytelling within the game, especially early on in a campaign before the party has gotten emotionally invested.  Most advice you can find online attempting  to solve this problem tends to dissolve down to “let them pour money into a home base”,  but that can only really happen once per campaign as a party is unlikely to want more than one secret clubhouse. 

TLDR:  What I propose is the implantation of a lightweight system that forces the party to periodically drop small amounts of wealth into maintaining their weapons/armour/foci. The players will be motivated to seek out gold in order to keep using their best stuff,  giving value to treasure drops that previously lacked it.  Not only does this system act as an insulation against powercreep at higher levels, it also encourages a party to engage with the world as they seek out workshops and crafters capable of repairing their gear. 

The System: 

Weapons, armour, shields, and caster foci (staves, holy symbols etc) can accumulate “ticks” of damage, represented by a dot or X drawn next to their item entry on the character sheet. Because you get better at handling your gear as you level up, an item that exceeds a total number of ticks equal to its bearer’s proficiency bonus breaks, and is considered unusable until it is repaired. 

Weapons and Foci gain a tick of damage when you roll a natural 1 on an attack made with them, or if they are specifically targeted by an enemy’s attack.

Armour and shields gain a tick of damage when you roll a nat 1 on a saving throw or when an enemy beats your ac by 5 or more. A character equipped with both can decide which of the two items receives the tick

Creatures with the “siege” (or any “does double damage to objects” ability) deal an extra tick when attacking gear. 

A character with a crafting proficiency  and access to tools can repair a number of ticks of damage equal to their proficiency on a four hour work period. This rate is doubled if they have access to a properly equipped workshop.  A character with access to the mending cantrip can repair ticks on any kind of item, but is limited to their proficiency bonus per work period.  

Having an item repaired by an NPC crafter removes all ticks, but costs vary depending on the rarity of the item:    5g for a mundane item, 10g for a common item, 50g for uncommon, 250 for a rare, 1250 for a very rare, 6250 for a legendary.  The DM decides the limit on what each crafter can repair, as it’s likely small towns have access to artisans of only common or uncommon skill, requiring the party to venture to new lands or even across planes if they wish to repair end game gear.

As you can see, degradation in this system is easy to keep track of and quite gradual, leading players into a position where they can ignore obvious damage to their kit for the sake of saving their now precious gold.  It likewise encourages them to seek out NPC crafters (and potential questhooks) for skills they do not possess, and encourages the use of secondary weapons either as backups or to save the more potent items in the arsenal for a real challenge. 

Consumables

Everyone knows the old joke about players hoarding consumables from the first adventure past the final bossfight, it transcends genre and platform, and speaks to a nature of loss aversion within our shared humanity.  However, giving players items they’re never going to use amounts to wasted time, resources, and potential when looking at things from a game design perspective, so lets work on fixing that. 

My inspiration came from witcher 3, which encourages players to make frequent use of consumables by refreshing them whenever the character had downtime. The darksouls series has a similar feature with the signature estus flask, which provides a limited number of heals before it must be refreshed at one of the game’s checkpoints.  When the designers removed the risk of permanent loss and the anxiety it creatures, players were able to think tactically about the use of their consumables confident in the knowledge that any mistakes were just a resupply away from being fixed.  

My proposal is that while the party is in town they can refill the majority of their consumable items for a small per item fee. Just like with gear degradation, this encourages them to seek out crafters and do quests for the hope of discounts, while at the same time encouraging them to explore new realms in the hope of discovering higher level artisans. 

The price for refills is set at: 5g for common, 25g for an uncommon, 125g for a rare, 625g for a very rare, 3125g for  legendary.  I encourage my own players to keep a  “shopping list” in their inventory with prices tabulated so they can hand out a lump sum of gold and have their kit entirely refreshed. 

Characters with a relevant skill and access to their tools can refill a number of items equal to their proficiency bonus during a four hour work period. With access to a proper workshop, this rate doubles.   ( At last, proficiency with brewers supplies, carpenters tools etc become useful) 

I encourage you as a DM to check out this potion flasks system, which I’ve found adds a delicious factor of uncertainty back into the mix.  Attached is also my super lightweight rules for tracking gear and supplies, which I absolutely refuse to shut up about.

Artist

[seat-safety-switch]

Lotta people have been asking questions about the new electric cars. Namely: where do I get one and why do they still cost so much fucking money? First answer is: buy them from your reputable local Switch Motors dealer on our Premium Fleece® incentive plan.

The answer to the second question is simple. Batteries. Have you bought a new starter battery for your car lately? It's made mostly of lead (basically free,) acid (also free,) and plastic (people will pay you to get rid of it,) and it costs two hundred dollars. And that's just some boring old lead-acid battery that doesn't work properly in the winter or when you do something like forget to drive your car for eight months.

Modern electric cars are equipped with high-technology future batteries that can provide the beefy amps required to make your chunky-ass family shoot down the road in silent cough-drop comfort. They use a bunch of parts of the periodic table that I've certainly never heard of (I thought hydride was a video game for the Nintendo?) and when your mileage starts to drop, you have to take them to the Apple Store to have a guy who questions your clothing taste pry open the cells and suck the bad juices out. Because of this, an electric car with a dead battery can be gotten for the money that fell into your couch when you kidnapped a rich person and forced them to sit on your couch.

Don't worry, though. I got a solution. It's called the grid. All we have to do is put a bunch of power lines recklessly close to the highway, and then we can chuck one of those subway-train pantograph poles on top. Unlimited power! The beancounters can probably work out some way to pay by the kilometer, and everyone's happy unless they have to change lanes.

[ratherembarrassing]

the timeline of this grrm drama (word used loosely) is hilarious.

grrm five days ago: i’m off to write my blog post enumerating my complaints.

hbo yesterday: here is a clearly unplanned podcast addressing in explicit beancounting detail a few specific choices we made about adapting a book for tv, including but not limited to why having a two year old being the lynchpin of your narrative through-line is a terrible fucking idea. for no reason.

grrm today: they lied to me about my two year old.

grrm two hours lated: *deletes*

hbo: press release ready to go.

dude has probably not shut up about this since 2022 and absolutely no one on that show cares lol

[onewomancitadel]

For me personally a tragic backstory or explanation of motivations is a justification, because it is important for me to think about why it is that bad things happen, and how they happen, and if they have any meaning at all, not just for the sake of culpability. I find it reassuring to know that there is evil in this world that comes from a place of experience and reason, however misbegotten. Aimless and senseless evil is what really frightens me.

It is not about 'deserving', it is not about moral transaction, it's not about playing criminal lawyer for my favourite characters - storytelling is not about putting on a performance of virtue kabuki to justify to other people that I promise I'm a good person (which itself is a kind of subterfuge bad people can easily perform! People can lie!) - any beancounter approach to narrative is just miserly and soulless.

Notice that the conversation gets squared down simply to culpability - mostly because it is about personal injury, evil character make me mad and evil character hurt my favourite character - which, if you are not playing along with this pseudojustice, you are basically responsible for the crimes of the fictional character because there is no fictional character to meaningfully hold accountable because they're not fucking real.

And it's completely bizarre when people bring real life justice into this because we find excuses for the things we do in life, even without good reason, all the time. Constantly. This is pretty much the one failure of existence, searching for justification when our justification is poor, that most people struggle with - from little things like not picking up rubbish when we walk past it to big things like not intervening when somebody is doing something wrong and you have the capacity to do so. So forgive me for being interested in people who make mistakes, or do wilful evil, for actual real reasons, let alone tedious, selfish excuses.

Empathy in relation to storytelling is not a crime. It's the point. You're supposed to feel something.

[mariacallous]

Meduza: The Kremlin’s beancounters hide numbers being used to guess KIAs in Ukraine: Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service has started hiding annual data on mortality from external causes (for example, car collisions, murder, and suicide), demographer Alexey Raksha revealed on Tuesday. The concealment is apparently the government’s effort to deny information to journalists and researchers who used the numbers to triangulate how many men are dying on the battlefield in Ukraine. (In July 2023, iStories reported that deaths from external causes started rising in 2022, while the number of cases among women fell, allowing the journalists to estimate Russian men killed in action.)

[thahxa]

honestly one of the taiwan things is like. if not for taiwan, what's the whole chinese military for? they put an entire 1-2% (or so) of GDP into there! which is like. a totally normal amount of GDP to spend except of course china is so damn big that they get to have lots of cool things like aircraft carriers and stealth fighters and... wait, has anyone figured out what this military is for yet?

like the US spends quite a bit on the military but it has an excuse at least - maintaining military bases in a double-digit number of countries and being europe's army is hard work! occasionally they even decide to go off and fight terrorism or do a coup or whatever

but... the chinese military? their last war was in 1979 (with border conflicts until '91) but since then it's been nothing except occasional border conflicts with india (where, remember, they are not allowed to use guns). china has a state policy of nonintervention in foreign affairs, for any reason (including humanitarian) and wasn't a participant in the war on terror (nor really, had any of their own). in the civil war with burma, a country that it directly borders and whose civil war would have major consequences for china, chinese policy has been to... let some guns fall off the back of PLA trucks to the wa state. it's aiming to have a blue water navy and rival the united states for... what exactly again?

but of course taiwan fixes this! china isn't going to be crossing the yalu to invade south korea or crossing into the jungles and invading vietnam - it has no reason, and honestly no desire to, even though it could probably win if it needed, but at least with taiwan you can justify this force buildup to the beancounters

[asgoodeasgold]

"It's a brilliant idea Charlie"

Bob has made an unholly alliance with beancounter Barry Lapidus to try and convince their boss, G+W CEO Charlie Bluhdorn, to go for a revolutionary strategy in releasing The Godfather. Blockbooking a huge amount of theatres at once and create a massive buzz. Genius. Every one will talk about it, even the Financial F*u*cking Times (to quote Bob).

Also Bob in a black polo neck jumper/jacket combo, yes please.

📷 The Offer (2022) my edits

[twocubes]

"game" which works by like

you register your email with a server, and it sends you emails, and you play the game by, in turn, emailing it like, documents written in some sort of domain-specific formal language, like beancount or ledger files or the equivalent for like, inter-library loan requests or whatever sort of bureaucratic inquests idk

you play the accountant for some shady business, and your job is to like, do the accounting for the business; basically you're supposed to send in files with information about where all the money went and where all the money is going.

the story then unfolds as you like, work out that there's holes in what people are reporting and send like formal requests to the Formal Request Processing Machine to uncover and then in turn cover up whatever shady bullshit is going on

(the rest of the company can only email the Department Email Address, which you can read, but you can't respond to them; instead all communication requests go through the Machine, in an attempt to prevent contradictory requests from the department and in order to like. well so they don't shoot the messenger, i guess. that's the watsonian explanation from your boss; the doylist explanation is that it's because from a programmer perspective you only ever want to have requests written in a formal language)

call it Enron Simulator or go for like more of an Aperture Science Accounting Department deal, idk.

[reasonableapproximation]

Trying to calculate capital gains on crypto, mostly out of curiosity. (I recently sold some, but not enough to need to report.)

I would have hoped it would be mostly easy. I've been tracking my assets with ledger. So for approximately every fraction of a bitcoin I own, I can see

This is the day I bought it

This is how much I paid

And this is the fees I paid

E.g. "bought 0.00724641 BTC on 2018-05-07, I paid £51.99 of which £1.99 is fees".

There are some exceptions: I have some that I got from mining or from the bitcoin faucet way back when, stored in a wallet on my computer that I couldn't figure out how to access again; I got someone else to do it for me in exchange for about half of what was in there. In my ledger this is just recorded as a 0.03 BTC input that I got given for free. And there's an in-progress bet that involved someone sending me $100 of BTC.

(Other coins are more complicated: I once bought BCH, converted it to BNB, converted that to SOL, moved the SOL to a different place, staked the SOL, moved it back, staked it again and eventually sold, and there's fees involved in lots of these steps.)

But ignoring this I'd hope it would be simple enough? But not really.

I think partly this is because calculating capital gains isn't an objective one-right-answer calculation. If I buy 1 BTC, then buy 3 BTC, then sell 2 BTC, then sell 2 BTC, it matters which order I sell them in.

Okay, but I think FIFO is pretty standard? But I don't think there's a way to specify that I'm doing that or any other approach that could be automated. I just need to manually say "okay, the BTC that I sold here are the same BTC that I bought here", and the way to do that is to specify the date and unit price when I bought them.

Which, I get having this written out explicitly in the file, that seems reasonable, but I'd hope for some way to auto-generate the posting, and I don't see one.

...also I've been letting the unit price be implicit, instead specifying the lot price. Which means the unit price has 16 decimal digits, which aren't written in the file, and which I need to copy exactly when I'm selling or the lots won't quite match up. (Which is mostly fine, but when I want to print lots explicitly it means it doesn't show as "I bought BTC valued at X and then sold them" but as "I bought BTC valued at X and on the same day went into debt for the same quantity of unrelated BTC valued at X±ε".) And sometimes exact isn't enough due to rounding errors.

So I'm converting lot prices to unit prices, which there ought to be a way to do that automatically too but afaict there isn't. (Unless I want to do some python scripting, which might be fun I guess but also might be super frustrating depending how good the API is.)

I've looked idly at hledger as well but from what I can tell it's no better at this. I don't think I've looked closely enough at beancount to know, that might be worth looking into. But I have over 7 years of financial data in ledger and it would probably be annoying to convert it all - just crypto would be fine I guess, but then I'm using two different CLI accounting tools.

[queen-susans-revenge]

It's so fun watching the Sussexes crush another freelance royal tour! I know I've said before that the beef between them and the Palace is fundamentally a labor dispute, and here they are, just viciously displaying their competitive advantage.

I mean, William and Catherine can't do this. They're fundamentally incapable of going to diverse countries and forging diplomatic bonds, generating that kind of free global goodwill just through their charisma and performance. Surely there must be some beancounters sitting around back home, chewing on the inside of their lips, and wondering if there's any way to walk back the hardball that they played before?

Or is it really just so feudal, still, that it actually does come down to William being jealous of his little brother's wife?

Because Harry and Meghan are signaling that they'd be fine with a truce, and William is letting it be known that no, they are in exile. This is in no way good for Britain, or the monarchy, or anything like that. It only soothes William's ego.

So if they just keep shutting the Sussexes out entirely, well, that's amazing. Whole state level decisions still being made by one spoiled boy!

Anyway I'm having a lot of fun putting newspaper clippings into my scrapbook/sideblog @sussex-newswire

[hphatecraft]

Getting a new manager sucks fucking balls especially when he's some corporate fixer beancounter cocksucker