#value add property definition

[comicaurora]

Hey Red, I'm trying to build a better understanding of mathematics, because to my mind math has always been a collection of arcane sigils that I had to memorize to pass tests in school. I must know how these sigils came to be and why they mean what they mean. Are there any resources you recommend I use in my pursuit of these secrets? Please and Thank You 🙏

It's good you described math as something you "build," because I think that's the best analogy possible.

Mathematics, in its purest form, involves no memorization. Math is the process of taking a very small number of established truths and defined operations that preserve truth, and using those operations on your established truths to expand your space of known truths. As long as you start from a point of truth and only use operations that preserve truth, you will derive truths. If you understand the base principles from which a branch of math is constructed, you can rederive it from first principles. Memorization is easier, but you can rederive it.

For instance, we can start with two things, the number "1" and the operation "+". 1 means "a single thing" and + means "put them together." If those two concepts exist, then we also have 2, 3, 4, and every other positive integer, because we can derive them by using + on as many 1s as we want. If we drop a rock on an empty patch of ground, and then drop a rock on that same patch of ground, that patch of ground now has two rocks on it.

If we include within the definition of "+" that there exists an identity value 0, and every value has an inverse that when added to it produces zero, we also get 0 and all the negative integers, producing the group of integers. Every integer can be expressed using nothing but the number 1, the + operation, and its inverse - if we're feeling spicy.

If we decide to add another truth-preserving operation, "*", with identity value 1 and the same kind of inverse property that "+" has, we rederive every rational number. Every number in this field of rational numbers can be described as a combination of 0s and 1s using only + and * and their inverses; truthful objects combined in truth-preserving operations. We started from the truth and we used it as our only building material to create something equally truthful.

We can memorize a multiplication table, but multiplication is just iterated addition. If we forget, we can just do the addition again.

Algebra is a simple rearrangement of a simple beginning math problem by way of other truth-preserving operations. When you're starting out, you might expect to see something like

3 + 5 = ?

Algebra starts when we replace "?" with a placeholder, "x". This is just a change of terminology. It preserves truth.

3 + 5 = x

This isn't what most algebra problems look like, though. Most basic algebra problems look more like

3x + 7 = 31

But these two formulae are the same, because we can turn one into the other through operations that preserve truth.

3x + 7 = 31 -> subtracting the same value from both sides of the equation is an operation that preserves truth. We subtract 7 from both sides, getting

3x = 24 -> dividing both sides of the equation by the same value is also an operation that preserves truth. We divide both sides by 3, getting

x = 8 -> addition is associative, so we can break 8 up however we want if we do

x = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = (1 + 1 + 1) + (1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1) = 3 + 5

Solving an algebra problem is the process of breaking down the things that make it complicated using the truth-preserving operations that defeat them. Added values can be subtracted. Multiples can be divided. Exponents can be root'd.

We understand what it means to put a placeholder in a math problem. We realize, by the same token, we can put in more than one placeholder, if we want. This gives us problems that don't have single numerical solutions, but spaces of solutions. Consider

2*x = ?

We do what we did before, replacing that "?" with something that means the same thing. We use a different letter to avoid confusion.

2*x = y

Now we have multivariable algebra. Instead of getting hard numbers for both variables, we have pairs of numbers. If we pick an x, we get a y. If we pick a y, we get an x. The relationship between the values is clearly defined; x will always be y/2. If x is 3, y is 6. If x is -1.8, y is -3.6.

Now for the sake of convenience, we create shorthand - another change of terminology that preserves truth. We come up with a term that describes this relationship between x and y. We decide to call y a "function."

y = f(x) = 2*x

A function is what we're calling one half of an equation; what goes on the other side of the equals sign. It's just a rename, like when we turned ? into x. It preserves truth.

The trick at this stage is that every element of this seeming increasingly complexity is actually an attempt to make the process simpler as we handle more and more things. We don't technically need any numbers other than 0 and 1 if we're just dealing with rational numbers. We could write 378/5 with nothing but 1s and +, -, * and /, but by god we wouldn't want to. We could write [x^3 + 2x + 5] as ?*?*? + ? + ? + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 and it would mean the same thing. The shorthand and symbols get dizzying if you lose track of what they mean, but when you remember what they mean, you understand why you need them.

Any piece of mathematical shorthand basically means "for this thing we're talking about, this set of things is known to be true." We can rederive those things if we need to, but the shorthand is there to help us avoid doing it unnecessarily. We call the integers a group because that means it has an associative operation that is invertible and has an identity element that, when used in the operation, leaves the operated-on value unchanged. We don't want to write that out every time we use + or remember what 0 means, but we can if we have to.

Calculus is where most people think math turns into wizardry, but derivatives and integrals are just another pair of inverse functions like + and - or * and /, and the building block of this branch of math is the derivative. Any formula for a derivative can, in a pinch, be rederived by calculating the difference quotient (f[x+h]-f[x])/h as h approaches 0. If f(x)=x^2, we may memorize that its derivative f'(x)=2x, or we may calculate

[f(x+h) - f(x)]/h =

([x+h]^2 - x^2)/h =

(x^2 + 2xh + h^2 - x^2)/h =

(2xh + h^2)/h = 2x + h

And the limit of this as h->0 is 2x.

Everything in math can be broken down to first principles. Everything. Sometimes it's very hard to figure out what tool you need to break it down to its next stage of simplification, but it was built from first principles and it can be broken down the same way. If it isn't making sense, break it down with truth-preserving methods until it does - even if you have to go all the way back to zeroes and ones.

[maybe-boys-do-love]

So I shared, the Spanish-language horror visual references in this week’s Peaceful Property episode (which are great ghost story films for comparison in thematic elements, as well). The death this week, though, is yet another ghost story reference, this time in an English-language series with lots of commentary on class and the racial and gender politics of domestic work, The Haunting of Bly Manor.

🚨spoilers for both series from here on🚨

In Bly Manor, Hannah Grose, the estate’s maid is revealed late in the series to be a ghost, who had fallen into a well on the grounds. Although the series is based off Henry James’s Turn of the Screw and its celebrated film adaptation The Innocents from the 1960s and its celebrated 2000s remake The Others* with Nicole Kidman (in which the twist from the previous is that the governess main character is revealed to be dead), Hannah Grose’s death is a new addition in the Netflix series. It compounds the complex themes about class and domestic servitude in the original British story and adds issues of race to the proceedings.

Peaceful Property uses Baanchuen’s story for similar purposes. Migrant domestic work is an important issue in Southeast Asia. The International Labor Organization put out a report last year stating, “29 per cent of surveyed migrant domestic workers in Malaysia were in conditions meeting the ILO’s statistical definition of forced labour; as were 7 per cent of surveyed workers in Singapore and 4 per cent in Thailand. Indicators of involuntariness include not being able to quit your job, having to stay in the job longer than agreed, and being made to work without overtime pay, among others.” Shackles, like those on Baanchuen’s ghost, are an easily recognizable symbol of enslavement, indicating the extent of Aunt Phom’s cruelty.

But even under legal circumstances, domestic workers are one of the least protected group of laborers in Thailand and abroad. Taiwanese-American labor organizer, MacArthur “genius” grant recipient, and mentor/friend to BLM cofounder Alicia Garza, Ai-Jen Poo has a fantastic interview on On Being, in which she discusses the racialized, gendered, international, and cross-class dynamics that define domestic care work, which impacts the strategies to organizing for workers rights in the field.

“The average annual income for a home care worker [presumably in the US at the time of recording in 2020] is $15,000 per year. And I can’t think of any community that I’ve ever lived in where you can survive on $15,000 a year. It’s really quite extraordinary. And they’re there and see employers come home with a pair of shoes that are maybe more than they make in a week, and yet, their job is to care and support and love, and they do so. You can’t actually do your job as a caregiver if you dehumanize the person that is in your charge. And I think that that is so much of what’s needed in this moment. All of us need to understand that we have a profound set of challenges and inequities that we have to deal with and transform, but we have to do it with a boundless sense of compassion and humanity.”

I’d encourage some of my fellow watchers of Peaceful Property to heed Poo’s perspective on disrupting class distinctions and what the advocacy for equitable practices has looked like in her work. I’m a caseworker myself and have worked alongside people who had less privilege than me for caring wealthy people who never the less didn’t always recognize the value of those whose work they depended on and didn’t have the labor laws that might provide that guidance. There are a few pieces of work that explore this meaningfully (better than The Help, although Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer absolutely carved out depths in their characters stories that weren’t there on the page). Glad to see Peaceful Property making its attempt to explore these depths. It actually made me reflect on how many of the jobs after the first episode really focused on gendered aspects of labor—a wig-maker, assistants, food-making…

And for my Homepeach truthers out there, that gender conversation is not just about labor. Bly Manor is also notable for its queer romance storyline with a wealthier character running from her internalized homophobia/guilt after a car accident…

*Incidentally, The Others is also heavily influenced by the same Spanish film, The Spirit of the Beehive, as both referenced Spanish-language horror films in these weeks episode.

[pixiecactus]

Martin said that some characters who survived in tv show will not survive in the books. And I'm terrified that Gendry will be one of them. In the TV show, he was merged with Edric Storm, so I doubt he will be legitimized. And George killed Ygritte after 2 books, it haunts me. LSH's business is so dangerous too

how do i wish i could reassure you that most likely that wouldn't be the case, nonnie, but i'm right there with you, sharing the exact fear.

what we have to take into account is that grrm doesn't kill characters for cheap shock value; from the way i see it, he kills characters that had already served their narrative purpose in the story.

and i know that people tend to discard gendry's importance in the text because he's one of the lowest-ranking characters in a social standard and that he was just another lowborn boy that arya made friends with, but if we add the fact that he was a bastard and he reminded arya of her beloved brother jon, it seems that gendry's existence is meant to convey that arya has a type already.

but i don't think that is his actual narrative purpose, and the fact that he's still kicking in affc means for me that he has a bigger role to fill yet than people may think, because to that moment he was (and arguably still is) a minor character that the author could have easily gotten rid of.

here's a link to an old post of mine (x) that left me with the belief that gendry being stationed alongside willow heddle is really significant because we see willow being the one protecting the inn with her crossbow, and willow branches used to be put in front of doors to ward off harm and repel evil spirits so i chose to interpret this as: until arya and gendry meet again, and meanwhile gendry stays at the crossroads inn he's going to be safe and sound, angry and heartbroken? sure, that too, but safe and sound nonetheless.

also let's think that arya already lost a lowborn friend before, and mycah was brutally killed... unless grrm really wants to really hurt one of his favourite characters again, because arya already learned with mycah's death the lesson that most highborns don't care about the smallfolk, i don't see the need to have gendry killed with this in mind as the reason why.

and to end this, i want to add that let's think about how most likely the name "gendry" is a mix of the words "gentry" and "gendre" and i'm going to put the definitions of each here below.

the translation from french to english goes like this: "a person's husband, in relation to that person's parents"

this is just funny and not serious at all speculation, but could this mean that gendry gets recognized as an official knight rather than an outlaw, and he gets rewarded with some land? because from what i got, the gentry is connected to landed state, and they get their riches from the property that generates the income without having to work the land. (oh god, this is the bad ending; like, this is almost gendry becoming a landlord, fuck that!!)

or gendry gets to be ned stark's son-in-law because he got married to arya. (good ending, but what is important here is that in some kind of way, gendry, a boy that is part of the smallfolk, has actually met both of arya's parents. i will not accept any discusion about other siblings being potential marriage candidates; it's arya or nothing, and i think that my boy gendry agrees with me on that!!)

thank you so much for your ask nonnie, i really hope that any part of what i've written can help you a little bit, but i'm still not so sure myself, and i'm sorry for that.

oh, and in any case, if the anon that sent me an ask while i was writing this response today, the ask was about arya, jon and genes (iykyk) is seeing this post, i'm sorry to inform you that responding will take me a while because i'm way past of my social quota, and my mind currently is a mess.

let me be an obnoxious asshole and say that this feels like i'm suffering from success because i really wanted to go, kill, and leave this blog behind. but i think that i could work around those feelings if i currently take some time off.

[sunny-superstar]

it’s not that spirk just “Went Canon” (although it’s fun to say) it’s that Unification gave fans a chance to see a conclusion to their story together… in a way that suits their relationship as it has Always been portrayed—Those guys are literally famous for being Together. it’s just nice to see it.

Spirk itself is schrodinger’s ship. it was designed to be ambiguous! since 1979 their relationship to each other has canonically been T’hy’la—friend, brother, lover—it is intended to be interpreted as any of those three definitions. as a trekkie, you have the choice to view it however you want!!!

also, Star Trek, as an IP, has had nearly 6 decades to be modified and molded by numerous writers and producers. there are countless events and characters that are “canon,” but what does that even mean? Like, for example, Paramount can wheel out an entire new series 50 years after the original material was released, and retroactively establish that Spock “canonically” had an adopted sister all along. Just because a soulless corporation wants to milk the property for all it’s worth, doesn’t mean You have to change Your understanding of the story. It’s fiction. It’s art. Its value and meaning as a whole is entirely subjective. That is, if I chose to Only consume original series content, then that is all that is canon to me! Retroactive changes cannot fundamentally alter what was put forth in the original material! Maybe that means putting blinders on (“that’s not canon TO ME”) but you do in fact have the ability to pick and choose what you want to accept in the narrative!

All that to say, spirk has been roddenberry-canon for 45 years already… for those with eyes to see. Maybe this is a radical/purist stance, but Unification doesn’t need to be accepted as canon, nor does the Generations film, or even any of the AOS films. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all fanfiction of the source material. So, if the roddenberry archives want to drop a deepfake short film where these old guys hold hands and stare lovingly into each other’s eyes, uh, cheers to that bro. i’ll add it to my personal canon it as i see fit lol

[magicaldragons]

'in the name of pain and outrage'

an analysis of the ending

I say this with utmost love, but episode 16 was a shitshow.

i walked into this show accepting it at face value – a show that would take itself lightly, with a compelling subplot marinated in humor, and a dose of sweet romance.

this show tried to include very mature, sobering themes with slapstick humor, which is definitely possible if balanced properly, but i feel this show was not able to achieve this the way do bong soon or others could.

to get some of the discrepancies out of the way:

they never told us that the women's senses were connected, geum joo should not have been able to feel namsoon's thirst – that's something they abruptly added to fuel the tension of the situation.

there is absolutely no reason nam soon would react like that to the drug, when you compare it to how every other user was affected by it.

the strength exerted by gil-joongan did not feel like enough to knock her out like that

and with how easy it would've been to leave the situation, it's very obvious that nam soon taking the drug was an ill-planned way to raise the stakes and increase suspense

the homeless couple truly had nothing of value to add to the show or it's message

none of the show's themes or messages were delivered properly towards the end, and it went against everything it preached.

the immediate tone change after ryu si-o's death did not do any justice to the effort put into his characterization

i do not understand how nam soon became a cop, all technicalities considered

why was she throwing humans out a window from the second floor, even if they're criminals??

they REALLY cheapened the whole marriage conversation by bringing money, property, and heirs into it. that was NOT romantic or wholesome. hee-sik deserves better parents, tf.

side note: i'm pretty disappointed with namsoon's character arc, but lee yoo mi worked within the purview of the script to give us honestly wonderful acting, especially in episode 15.

now, to get into the ending, i'll start with this:

what we got, felt like an empty victory. hollow and out of place.

i've always been an advocate for all parts of a show coming together to create an experience – there's usually no single keystone.

but as soon as si-o died, the rest of the episode felt like a blur, with all loose ends being succinctly wrapped up and prepared for season three. byeon woo seok, and his characterization really carried the show as a unit, and added to its cohesiveness. i did not find myself rooting for geum joo and nam soon's successes afterwards

because they had failed the ONE thing most of us had been hoping for them to do:

to save people who were victims of oppression from those with the power of money, and empower them, including to save si-o from his oppressors, and help him take down pavel.

there is no satisfaction in geum joo doing it by herself, because she has no emotional investment in destroying pavel.

losing hwaja and si-o, watching namsoon & heesik become one dimensional all of a sudden, and seeing tertiary unrelated characters having their loose ends tied, is extremely unsatisfactory – for a show that had an incredible cast and so much potential.

at the same time: i loved the portreyal of gil joongan's mission to help the elderly and her enthusiasm for her future, and the addition of binbin + looking into their past from an additional angle also really elevated the emotional context of si-o's character arc.

i loved each character, truly, and to not see the plot and writers give them the detail and care they deserve, is wholly disappointing.

the show took me on a whole journey, emotionally,,,but to know exactly what would make it better, and be aware of its discrepancies makes me grieve the potential it had to truly leave an impact on its viewers, with a solid takeaway message.

[liquidorcard]

Could we maybe get an analysis on her “stop making villains like Magneto, they suck” video?

Also, I for one am sat patiently for that Flowers In The Attic analysis.

FItA Lorch Analysis coming next.

For right now: Part 3, Final round. FIGHT!

[Part 1] [Part 2]

Lily Commits Elder Gay Mutant Abuse, feat. "Eldritch Lily" (Part 3)

8:30: "And making these characters hop in the giant death robot so they can randomly do some heinous act of evil so you feel less guilty for wanting to bring them down is very telling about your priorities as a writer." [We're still talking about Korra, for context.]

I'm highlighting this quote more than anything as a means to really dig into the big stink with Lily's media analysis here. I've said something along the lines of, "I kind of agree with her, but not actually," several times while writing this, and this is exactly why.

I think a lot of people come at media criticism from a very flawed position because of the way the grading works in our school systems, of all things. They judge it like there is the possibility of getting an A+ on your show, movie, novel, video game, etc. For the purpose of reviews, as a quick way to indicate quality/how much you recommend a piece of media, I understand why critics would use scoring systems like that-- but when it comes to analysis, that's not really a useful approach. There are technical skills and proficiencies in execution that you can grade media on like that, but even they have their nuances. Conceptual ideas presented in media, however? No dice.

There are certain filmmakers in particular who I fully acknowledged are very skilled at their craft-- I still strongly dislike their films. I don't agree with the conceptual ideas they have to present, and I don't think they convincingly rationalize their position textually, subtextually, or otherwise. With that said: I think most media produced, regardless of quality, is a net positive for the intellectual landscape of humanity as a whole. With the exception of media that is actively harmful in a very direct way, disingenuous propaganda, or particularly egregious cases of cooperate slop, I support any creative's ability to add to the long-form conversation art and creation offers. Those highly proficient filmmakers I ideologically disagree with, their ability to articulate their worldview so genuinely, and clearly helped me as a creative articulate why I disagree.

With all that said, it's clear Lily doesn't think in that regard. Lily has taken media crit she has heard from other sources. She has just retrofitted it to whichever property she wants to rip into. If it superficially applies enough that she can misrepresent a piece of fiction with an argument, she will apply it across the broad. Approaching media crit like there is a definitive way to "score" fiction on its conceptual value, like it's a high schooler's end of term essay. Context be damned.

What she is articulating here is a valid criticism of certain fictions that try to present morally complex villains. This is a complaint I've made myself over properties like the first Black Panther film (which, thankfully, they at least did their best to rectify in the second). But not Kuvira. Not Magneto as a whole.

9:07: "Which would have been interesting, and led to some criticism of the main characters for trying to restore the same monarchy that has previously failed the people."

They weren't trying to restore the monarchy. They were protecting the prince from assassination. I feel like it'd be pretty tyrannical of the Avatar to say, "fuck you Earth Kingdom, you don't get your royal family anymore," without their say, Lily . . .

9:18: "Maybe talk about the United Republic being a literal concurred settler state."

YET AGAIN LILY'S CRITICISM BOILS DOWN TO, "I HAVE NEVER READ A COMIC."

9:30: [Lily takes like, the 12th bullshit pot shot at the creators of Avatar.]

I've ignored it up until this point. There's been too much else to talk about. But Lily has assumed an absurd amount about the authorial intent of everyone she's discussed in this video-- including Jack Kurby's intent when creating Magneto.

9:40: Lily fumbles through some final point here with two sentences that make no sense when put together about how this is all people doing tropes badly, but if you did it well then the trope wouldn't exist and aaaaaaaaaaaaa.

God please strike me down.

10:10: Lily calls this all propaganda.

Again. She's sort of right in the abstract, divorced from the content of her video. Wrong when taken in context of what she's talking about. SOMETIMES "sympathetic villains" are used as political propaganda. Sometimes, they're a legitimate expression of a creator's misunderstanding or mischaracterization of an ideology. Sometimes, they're an earnest dissection of the ideological concept.

Good argument of specific pieces of media, retrofitted, flattened of any nuance, used to discredit a thing Lily doesn't like across the board.

We're in a timeloop.

10:25:

God is dead and we have killed him.

11:01: "The problem is that this idea of all villainy being nuanced and complicated has just never really been true. Evil people in real life will often just invent justification for evil things they already want to do. And there's a point where someone crosses the line of evil so much that nothing they say earns them sympathy."

Lily thinks people commit acts of extreme violence and atrocity for . . . Fun, I guess. Disturbingly enough, this tracks real well with how she's justified her own abhorrent actions in the past. When other people do bad things, it's because they like it and are bad. When she does a bad thing, she has a reason, and therefore, it's justified. Another self-tell Lillian.

11:42: "The problem with my idea for these kinds of villains is that they inherently make white people of any gender uncomfortable."

GOD FINALLY FUCKING DONE THIS GOD FORSAKEN VIDEO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Pray for me, the fucking psychic damage I just fucking took for you guys.

I suppose the only take away here is this:

The thing that's so exhausting about Lily's videos is the complexity of the degrees in which she is wrong. She's developed, for lack of a better word, a talent for laundering good arguments in a very disingenuous fashion. I wouldn't go so far as to call what she does plagiarism. Her work is more than just stealing other people's arguments and regurgitating them back-- but what she does is a spiritual cousin of sorts.

She bootlegs intellectualism to sharpen it into a shiv she can use to stab at anything that displeases her. The same way she weaponizes her marginalized identity, she weaponizes honest and thoughtful media analysis aswell.

This video was, frankly, barely even about Magneto. Barely even about sympathetic villains. She has no interest in the material that was the topic of this video-- not even enough to do a bare-bones Google search beyond looking up vague facts she could massage into supporting her claims.

A lot of those very early X-Men comics are fucking rough. They include shit like Charles expressing some very creepy thoughts about a (I believe then) teenage Gene Grey. Some very yikes dynamics with the then mostly/arguably entirely white mutants acting out very on-the-nose imagery associated at the time with the black liberation movement. And some very questionable framing and dynamics due to the fact that, real life marginalized groups typically don't have dangerous superpowers.

However, you can almost sense the moment when Kurby started to take the reigns and make the X-Men into something really special. Not to imply that Stan Lee is a bigot or a bad writer, he had very good intentions. By his own admission, he did his best work as a collaboration with his artists guiding the story along with him (sometimes, well, functionally being the actual writer, no offense, Lee left a bit of a complicated legacy, we can't get into it right now.) Anyone familiar with Kurby's work as a whole will know just how profoundly humanist he was with the stories he told.

Despite what Lily arrogantly implied here, he always intended Erik to be a very sympathetic character. Even as a "villain," a sympathetic character vaguely coded as an "extremist" black activist was kind of bold for the 1960s. I can't tell you for certain what ol' Jack's authorial intent was, the man very rudely died 3 years before I was born so I never really got the chance to ask him-- but dare I say this was his best attempt at laundering the idea that maybe "radical" activists actually maybe had a point? To an audience who would have been VERY against that idea if presented to them outright at the time? Even now?

Media does have the power to shift cultural perception-- even if that takes time. In the early 2000s, when I was taught about Malcome X for the first time as a child, even then, 40-some-odd-years later he was presented to me in a negative light. It was in the context of him being the inspiration for Magneto, however. The emotional connection I had to that character made me question whether that characterization of Malcome was entirely fair-- even though I was too young and didn't have the full context to grasp what I was being told at the time. I do believe to some extent that Magneto's popculture relevance has helped preserve the legacy of some of the more controversial activists in history. By being a figure people can personally connect with. Of course, it's all more complicated and messy than I'm making it sound, however. It's unfortunately very easy to flanderize figures of history, boil down their motives, and flatten their narratives. A character in a story, detached from any direct sociopolitical baggage, is something you can form a bond with. Something that can (if handled properly) promote empathy for their real-life equivalents.

There absolutely is a conversation to be had about certain ideologies or positions being more often than not, for practical or political purposes, cast in the antagonistic role in fiction. However, Lily's thesis here, boiled down to the bones, has been disproven ten times over by the abject failure of shit like The Comic's Code Authority and The Hays Code. People don't emotionally connect with squeaky clean moral paragons as much as they do messy, complicated, emotionally challenging complex characters-- even when you paint them as the abject villain of the story.

People fucking adore Magneto. He's a cultural icon. Even before the FoX-Men movies came out, he was probably one of the few comicbook characters your mom could name. Vaguely recognize, at the least. And yes, that doesn't always translate into people being charitable to "radical" civil rights activists in real life-- but doesn't necessarily harm it either. Anecdotally, it helps, if but just a smidgen.

Anyway, get fucked Lily. Magnet Daddy FTW.

P.S. X-Men '97 is really good. Also, it's 100% alluding to these two having fucked. Maybe outright confirmed it by now, I'm not totally caught up.

I mean, we all already knew they totally were lovers, but.

Come on Disney, give the people what they want. Make 'em kiss. These poor old men have been having sexual tension for like, 60 years.

[jellymeduza]

Hi Meduza, is it possible to make your flyable TS4 rocket charges money in SimPE? I’m thinking about increasing the prices of those aliens so that the trips have higher stakes. I would like to learn how to increase the logic points as well. Thanks for the great mods 🐸

Hi!

Sorry for replying so late. 😳

It is possible to make my rocket charge money for using it (currently using it is free), but it doesn't have anything to do with the price of the items a Sim may bring with them from their trip.

Making the rocket charge money

First, you need to edit [Text List] 0x0000012D in Text String (STR#) tab. Select any line on the list and click "Add". Change the new list to something like "I can't afford it!". Click "Commit File".

To make the usage of the rocket payable, you'd want to edit BHAV "Function - Ride - Start".

Click node 0x0. Using "Ins/false" button (it will appear after selecting "special buttons" checkbox) add node 0x1. Change node 0x1 to OpCode 0x0294 and node version to 0x00.

Click hammer and wrench icon and change the properties to something like mine:

"Amount" is the cost of the ride. Debit/Credit should be set to 0 and expense type to Const 0x013F:0x00 ("Misc Expense"). As Obj ID set My object ID.

Then using "Ins/false" button add node 0x2. Chnage the OpCode to 0x0002 [prim 0x0002] Expression. Using hammer and wrench set it to Stack Object ID 0x0000 := My 0x000B (object id). Set "False Target" to "Error".

Then click "Ins/true". Change thr OpCode of the new node 0x3 to 0x0024 and the "True Target" to "Return True". Click the hammer and wrench icon. Change the properties in the dialog box as follows:

Click node 0x1 Budget - Make Transaction once again. Change the "True Target" to node 0x0004.

Click "Commit File" and save.

2. Altering the price of items brought from a trip

I haven't done anything like that in any of my mod or object. However, my educated guess is that maybe altering BHAV "Interaction - Add something" could work. This is my suggestion, but I have no idea if it is going to work:

In BHAV "Interaction - Add something" select node 0x9 (Create New Object Instance) and select "Ins/True".

Select new node 0xA. Change the OpCode to [prim 0x0002] Expression. Click on the hammer and wrench icon and change the properties to "Stack Object's 0x0029 (current value) := Stack Object's definition 0x0012 (price)".

Then click "Ins/True" once more and select new node 0xB. Select the hammer and wrench icon and change the properties to "Stack Object's 0x0029 (current value) += Literal 0x0005". The "Literal" value in this case is how much you are going to increase object's price, so you can set it to whatever you like. Just remember that unless you tick the "decimal" box, the numbers are in hexadecimal system.

As I said, I don't know if it's going to work. Foremost, I don't know if changing the value in this manner is carried over if the object is added to Sim's inventory with the use of [global 0x044A] Inventory - Visible - Add Item.

It probably won't hurt to try it. ��‍♀️

[shu-of-the-wind]

Okay so I have been asked to cast an eye over SB197 in the WV legislature, which is a new bill introduced to both add a new section to WV law as well as amend an existing section about child neglect and abuse, to see what potential issues I see.

TLDR: this is not only really dangerous from a standpoint of people being trans publicly, since one of the big editions is making being trans a display of obscene material and punishable by law, particularly within school grounds, but I am also seeing a lot of parental rights additions that make me REALLY SCARED of how trans kids are going to be treated in WV. I’m going to go thru it section by section and break down why each section frightens me, so hopefully this is educational for folks.

My creds: I worked in family law as an attorney for three years, I was affiliated with a public defenders office for that same amount of time working primarily with juvenile offenders, and I am still an attorney even if I haven’t worked in those fields for the last six months. Plus I’m trans. And I love WV and wanted to live there. So.

WEST VIRGINIA'S FUN NEW SHITSHOW HORROR HOUSE TIME.

The new section (formally titled §18-5-29, Obscene matter in public schools prohibited [I will be calling it the Obscenity section]) is about 700 words of absolute garbage. Essentially what it distills down to is the following.

Section A: prohibiting anything they label as “obscene matter” in or within 2500 feet of any public school library, classroom, building, or other facility under the supervision of the state board of education and requiring that any school officials or personnel who become aware of the material remove it from school grounds. “Obscene matter” is currently defined in §61-8A-1 of the WV code, pretty fuckin broadly (unconstitutionally so in my opinion but ~that’s me~). So basically anything an “average person applying contemporary community standards would find taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest or is pandered to a prurient interest” (basically, anything ~unwholesome~), anything that an “average person applying community standards” would find depicts sexually explicit conduct in a “patently offensive way,” or anything that a reasonable person would find “taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, scientific or political value” which basically means E V E R Y THING.

Section B. This is the one that scares the shit out of me tbqh, cause this is folding in the amendment section I mentioned earlier to another part of the WV code specifically relating to child abuse and neglect. This section mandates that any “school officials or school personnel while engaged in a professional capacity or activity” shall be found to be a “custodian of children” under WV law. This basically makes EVERYONE a mandatory reporter, which like…most professionals already are, but at the same time this is EXPLICITLY MAKING ANYONE WHO WORKS IN THE SCHOOL IN ANY CAPACITY (see: any school officials or school personnel) mandatory reporters regarding “obscene matter.” So if an adult working at the school even SUSPECTS that a child has been exposed to “obscene material “while in any public school facility (unclear from the phrasing if the exposure happened on school property, or if the professional just learns about it there) and they decide not to report it (or they “fail to make a TIMELY report” when there’s no real definition of what timely means) then they can be prosecuted for a misdemeanor and imprisoned.

Section C. The state superintendent is going to establish a procedure to file complaints alleging violations of subsection A. If they find that a violation occurred, they will TELL THE COPS THAT IT HAPPENED.

Section D. No government funds (state or federal) can be used to develop or operate programs “designed to promote or encourage sexual activity, whether homosexual or heterosexual” or “to distribute or aid in distribution of any legally obscene materials” within 2500 feet of a school building or facility. Which, woof. We could unpack everything about that one, but it’ll be most of the review.

Section E. If an adult is found to have committed a felony under the child neglect statute related back to this one (if they’re found to have neglected kids by allowing them to view or possess “obscene material” is my understanding, this bill isn’t written that well) then they will be subject to penalties set forth in a felony, which I’m guessing (on average) is at least a year in jail and a thousand dollar fine, from what I’ve seen of WV felony statutes.

Section F. THIS IS THE OTHER REALLY SCARY ONE TO ME FROM A LEGAL STANDPOINT. “Any student or parent, guardian, or custodian on behalf of a student shall have civil cause of action against a county board, public charter school, state board” if the entity caused or was negligent in allowing a violation of the preceding sections, basically if they let anything slide PARENTS CAN SUE THE SCHOOL which like…if you’re talkin about a trans kid who is not out to their parents, they’re found to have “obscene material” (fanfiction?? Fanfiction could qualify here??? Risque art that isn’t even definitionally pornography?? A book abut transitioning that they’re hiding from their parents???) the school is mandated to not only out this kid to their parents, but the parents can then sue the school if the school DOESN’T OUT THE CHILD. Just spinning a hypothetical here but I hate this.

The rest of the bill is adding in definitions to Article 8A of the WV code, which are as follows. Anything italicized is the new language that has been proposed to be added by the bill; anything NOT italicized was already in the law:

(g) "Graphic," when used with respect to a depiction of sexually explicit conduct, means that a viewer can observe any part of the genitals or pubic area of any depicted person or animal during any part of the time that the sexually explicit conduct is being depicted.

(h) "Identifiable minor" means a person: (i) who was a minor at the time the visual depiction was created, adapted, or modified; or (ii) whose image as a minor was used in creating, adapting, or modifying the visual depiction; and (iii) who is recognizable as an actual person by the person’s face, likeness, or other distinguishing characteristic, such as a unique birthmark or other recognizable feature;  and shall not be construed to require proof of the actual identity of the identifiable minor.

(i) "Indistinguishable" used with respect to a depiction, means virtually indistinguishable, in that the depiction is such that an ordinary person viewing the depiction would conclude that the depiction is of an actual minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

(i)(l) "Matter" means any visual, audio, or physical item, article, production transmission, publication, display, exposure, exhibition, or live performance, or reproduction thereof, including any two- or three- dimensional visual or written material, stereopticon, moving picture, slide, film, picture, drawing, not exceeding $500 video, graphic, graphic novel, or computer generated or reproduced image; or any book, not exceeding $500 magazine, newspaper or other visual or written material; or any motion picture or other pictorial representation; or any statue or other figure; or any recording, transcription, or mechanical, chemical, or electrical reproduction; or any other articles, video laser disc, computer hardware and software, or computer generated images or message recording, transcription, or object, or any public or commercial live exhibition performed for consideration or before an audience of one or more.

(j)(m) "Minor" means a an person under eighteen years of age or a person representing himself or herself to be a minor. Any prosecution under this article relating to a victim who is representing himself or herself to be a minor shall be limited to investigations being conducted or overseen by law enforcement.

And the big doozy here is this one:

(k)(n) "Obscene matter" means matter that:

(1) An average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, would find, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, is intended to appeal to the prurient interest, or is pandered to a prurient interest;

(2) An average person, applying community standards, would find depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexually explicit conduct; and

(3) A reasonable person would find, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

(4) For the purposes of any prohibition, protection, or requirement under any and all articles and sections of the Code of West Virginia protecting children from exposure to indecent displays of a sexually explicit nature, such prohibited displays shall include, but not be limited to, any transvestite and/or transgender exposure, performances or display to any minor.

(l)(o) "Parent" includes a biological or adoptive parent, legal guardian, or legal custodian. (underlining this one for the legal side note that remember that custodian language from before??? that's where this kicks in)

(m)(p) "Person" means any adult, partnership, firm, association, corporation, or other legal entity.

(n)(q) "Sexually explicit conduct" means a ultimate definitive sexual act, normal or perverted, between persons of the same or opposite sex, actual or simulated, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal sexual intercourse, sodomy, oral copulation of any kind, sexual bestiality, sexual sadism and masochism, masturbation, excretory functions and lewd exhibition of the anus, genitals or pubic area of any person, or lascivious simulated sexual intercourse where the genitals, breast, or pubic area of any person is exhibited.

okay. well.

I mean. This is all just gonna be an absolute garbage hellscape if this gets passed. THE IMPORTANT THING IS IT HAS NOT BEEN PASSED. If you live in WV, you can call folks and say that you are AGAINST the passage of SB197. Call your state or county representatives! They are the people who vote on this! If your representative is on the Judiciary Committee, so much the better, that’s where the bill is being evaluated right now!!! Here is the list of delegates on the committee! Call them!! Make a point to be upset!!! Explain why you don’t want this bill to pass!!! Keep an eye on the Committee website for the dates that the public hearings will be held on this bill, because there likely will be a public hearing people can speak at!! You CAN actually do something, it’s not the end of the world.

Even if you do not live in WV and you live NEAR WV, then 100% reach out to folks you know who live there and give them a safe space to land if they need to get out of the state!!! There are things you can do. Just….a heads up to everyone that this is on the table and it’s something they’re going to be discussing.

[bimboficationblues]

as that anon message you got shows, the term "liberal" gets hurled around a lot as an insult on the left. what would you say are the necessary and sufficient conditions to be a liberal? i think having a straight answer for this would help remedy this sort of behavior

not sure what anon you're referring to. regrettably I don't think you're going to get people to stop using terms in loose or disagreeable ways no matter what, it just is the nature of political terminology (definitionally up for contestation) and language in general. part of the difficulty here is that the same term gets used to describe a political system, an ideology or hegemonic worldview, and a form of political identification

but as far as necessary/sufficient conditions go I like Charles Mills' formulation:

an axiology: committed to individual freedom to pursue the Good, governance by 'consent', the guarantee of specific political and economic rights (non-exhaustive list)

a social ontology: equal moral persons who are atomized or individualized and whose individuality, particularly their self-interested pursuit of their own Good, makes a functional society

a theory of history: endless progress, the accumulation of knowledge and the application of it to advancing human well-being (though this can be more or less Panglossian)

and would add a couple of my own:

a political methodology that gives priority to reform and positive law

an economic worldview that emphasizes the efficiency of money and markets and affirms private property as a central right (often *the* central right)

my own sort of working definition of liberalism writ large is that it's a kind of aristocratic legalism which has a key value of "security" (this is inspired by the work of Geoff Mann and Mark Neocleous), an investment in predictable, consistent outcomes that also expresses itself as a fundamental anxiety about the tenuousness of these institutions and of "civilization" as a whole (an interesting point of overlap between Keynes and Hayek). that's what I kind of see as the throughline between the combination of money, markets, law, and reform.

I would say that the elements listed above which automatically send up the yellow flag, for me, are the political methodology and the theory of history - either a sort of blinkered optimism/false realism about the ability to endlessly patch up our existing institutions or someone who has bought into a kind of linear historical narrative of constant improvement

even though I am not a market socialist and think that is probably excessively "liberal" for my own tastes, I think it is plausible to hold that position without being a liberal, if that makes any sense (it may not). inversely, the axiology of freedom, universalism, &c., often get cited as exclusive to liberalism, but I really don't think they are and remain unpersuaded by the various factions (commie, lib, postcolonialist, and so on) that have argued otherwise. not that I think ideas of freedom, equality, etc. are above conceptual critique per se, but I think I wouldn't assume somebody is a lib because they truck in that language.

[constantlymisspelled]

Feemor

For those people on my fic who literally screamed when they saw him in the character notes, here is all you need to know about him.

[Above image is of an ambiguously blonde masculine appearing Jedi by the name Feemor, in brown and beige robes. There is a hand upon his shoulder - Qui Gon's - and he is his Master's first apprentice.]

So this is Feemor, right? As he is in the Comics.

But we don't really get much about Feemor, or what he's like, so outside of the most loose definition of what he sort of, kind of, looks like, I was allowed to run absolutely buck wild.

Possibly not a good thing.

But when I stood above my cauldron, creating the man that would be Feemor, Qui Gon Jinn's repudiated apprentice, I brought forth some essential ingredients.

1. A little bit of Steve the Babysitter

Anyone who's anyone knows Steve Harrington by now. And the distinct lack of Steve Harrington Coded Characters just upsets me. Plus, pretty much every fix-it fic in the business states that he'd find Qui Gon's mental state not a good enough reason to traumatize Baby-Wan. Alas, the reality that could have- Oh wait, I'm a fic writer!!!

Reality is what I wish it.

2. A teensy bit of Tiny Timmers

If you ever want comedic value for a Jedi Knight - one that is tired and exhausted and tortured by their own intelligence - than the Tim Drake Archetype is for you! The frequently forgotten member of the Bat Lineage, he is a perfect fit of character traits for Feemor the grudgingly helpful, but done with it all Knight that downs Caf fast enough on the regular to make Commander Fox seem perfectly adjusted.

3. Some, Uh, Hey there Demons, it's me, ya boy.

Come on, is that not the funniest idea for a Jedi you've ever heard? Looks at a haunted Sith Holocron and says; "Huh, must be a breeze." A healthy dose of paranoid sceptic who knows more about the paranormal than he ever wanted to know? Perfection.

(Oh, and he absolutely did take that Comedy Class with Nej. It... the less spoken about watching Master Windu's theatre productions the better...)

And so, I turned the pot, right, had a good taste, but something was missing. Low and behold, upon the disgraceful vaults of TikTok, there is a user called DannyPhantom.exe, whose vibes are so cryptid as to make all these concepts work as one.

And so there he is, at the very end, Feemor as he is in Lost Property Box - A headache to the Librarians, The stick in the mud of his Creche-mates, and quite possibly the only Lineage Member Komari Vosa doesn't want to punt off the Hangar walls.

[I'll add some pictures of him sometime, but I think its imperative you know who I based this particular characterisation off of. So that you can all giggle uncontrollably along beside me as I write it.]

[Additionally, I am giving him the most bogan haircut. If you're gonna be blond, may as well go full hog undercut mullet, you coward. Mando's (for some reason) love that shit. The worse the haircut, the better.]

[growcapitalgroup]

[headacheflowers]

Over the past few months I've been getting closer and closer to the conclusion that some of my social problems may in fact be partially solvable by simply moving to a bigger city.

The lack of a car is a part of this, but there's also some other shit.

Ever since the last time I was evicted into homelessness by a "leftist" for being unable to pay rent due to my disability, the "rigid values" autism has been hitting me really hard and I just can't stand being close friends with or dating most people anymore. It seems like most people, even leftists, are defensive of a homeowner's "right" (as it were) to rent out rooms in their house and then subsequently evict those people if and when they're unable to pay. I've even had to sever ties with people because they maintained amicable, unnecessary ties with landlords who own multiple properties (i.e. rent out space that is NOT connected to their primary residence).

I want to add that my most general definition of "landlord" includes people who rent out rooms inside their own place of residence. You are still using housing as capital to extract profit from other people. You're a landlord.

As someone who has been homeless multiple times and is aware of the harm that this extremely common disposition towards housing does to extremely vulnerable people, it often feels like I'm literally surrounded by enemies. Every time I start getting to know someone, I find myself instinctively trying to gauge how likely they'd be to look the other way if one of their buddies displaced a tenant (maybe me??) into homelessness.

I think it's partly a survival adaptation--to be hypervigilant about whether or not a new person, deep down, is a closeted property pervert who, when pressed to hold a loved one accountable, would ultimately defend the use of housing as capital over the use of housing to house people.

I especially feel this way when I meet a new person who is privileged enough to own a home: if they start renting a room out & using their control over their housing to profit off of others' need for housing (which is always parasitic & exploitative behavior), would they then force that other person into homelessness if their victim later became unable to cough up the cash?

[river-of-wine]

Totally agree with your posts. I like Alcina, but people make her out to be this wonderful person who Ethan cruelly murdered when…she’s killing / torturing / eating / maiming her maids. Whether she’s a good mom or not, her “daughters” are girls she presumably kidnapped, experimented on, killed and then kept prisoner once they mutated ( even if they’re weak to the cold and it’s to protect them.) They might have imprinted on her but they have no identity outside of Alcina ( she literally branded them with tattoos! ) and I can’t imagine she’s ever told them who they were before, as they seem to have no memory of it. Whether she genuinely loves them or not is up for debate but I think she definitely sees them as property. She is basically Miranda 2.0 and seems to want to imitate Miranda, but only one of them gets lots of hate. I think she’s fascinating and I like her, but fandom has absolutely declawed her.

Donna too, just because she’s mentally ill ( which is never specified in Miranda’s notes which could be anything, and god knows what Miranda considers mentally ill ) gets so infantilized as if she isn’t a grown woman who knows what she’s doing. The gardener’s death could be accidental, sure, but she knew what she was doing and a lot of the imagery, especially all the pier piper paintings in her house, suggests she’s been killing children ( purposely or not ) - there’s no children in the village and no one ever mentions any outside of Eva or Rose!

Villains are wonderful and interesting, and each lord is fascinating but it’s so weird to me people say they like these characters and then seem to change or ignore anything about them in canon.

I agree! I love Alcina as well, I think she’s an excellent first boss to illustrate the departure from RE7 and it’s realism, because she’s as over the top as it gets with the four lords. She’s 9”6, has daughters made of flies, lives in a huge castle and turns into a dragon when she gets stabbed by a poisoned knife. She’s fun, and part of what adds to her over the top nature as a villain is the sheer amount of violence and destruction that comes along with her.

I would say that technically it was Mother Miranda who kidnapped the girls, or at least stole their corpses, since Alcina recounts Mother Miranda bringing her the girls. Regardless of this, Alcina was still complicit in this experimentation and just kept the results of it. To me, Alcina’s value of the daughters has always seemed to be placed on the fact that Mother Miranda gave them to her. She does not treat the girls like children she cares about, she just orders them to do her dirty work for her regardless of the danger it presents for them, while Alcina - who is almost endlessly durable and much more capable of killing Ethan - just roams around the castle. You are absolutely right in saying that Alcina is close to being a second Mother Miranda. She is the only person who’s opinion Alcina really seems to value, and in terms of their actions and the amount of people they have each killed or in some other way harmed, Alcina comes the closest.

I hadn’t actually considered the imagery in Donna’s house, but that’s a very good point! The one I always remember is the painting of a pregnant woman that falls when you pass it, which is a nice addition to the theme of the house with its warped imagery and recounting of Mia’s pregnancy and Rose, so environmental design in House Beneviento is very intentional especially in that regard. Donna’s method is so interesting, and the potential of her victims being children - which would explain why there are no children in the village and why there are so many dolls hanging around her property, perhaps to lure them in - is something I really would like to see more people discuss rather than absolving her of all wrongdoing because of this supposed incapability she has to understand her very calculated actions and what she shows Ethan. I love both of these evil women! Let them be evil! They’re more interesting that way!

[some-teeth-in-a-trench-coat]

What are some of your current blender projects? Or just things you like abt the program and hobby?

Hi sorry I meant to answer this several days ago but I kept forgetting until right before bedtime and I knew this would not be short... Thank you for the ask!

Ok so I don't know what your definition of "current projects" is but there's nothing I'm actively working on right now, I'm just playing Minecraft all day, but I have many wips in various degrees of being abandoned, most recent being an alternative to https://minetrim.com/ that would run in Blender and be controlled by a geometry nodes modifier. I do hope I get around to finishing it, since the online tool as it currently exists is lacking in many aspects and can be a little buggy. It probably wouldn't be all that useful for most players since you'd need to install Blender and understand a few basics of how to use it, but it would at least help me plan my armor trims (if you don't know, Minecraft recently added a system for cosmetic customization of the player's armor combining colors and patterns, and the website and my tool are meant to simulate user-selected combinations to see what it'd look like).

And that is one of my favorite things to do in Blender, create little tools with geometry nodes, which is basically a visual simplistic programming language interacting with many of the things Blender does. I can create a customizable banana with randomized shapes and spot locations with a slider for age, length, curviness, thickness, you name it, and produce a photorealistic banana (this is one abandoned project), or I could make a regular polyhedron generator taking only a Schläfli symbol as input (another abandoned project, here's a great video that inspired me to try, I highly recommend it if you have no idea what I just said), or, as mentioned, an armor trim simulator.

But Blender can do so much and I can't talk about it without mentioning that it is Completely Free And Open Source and it's good for so much more than just 3D modeling. You can of course add materials to the model, defining exactly how the surface interacts with light, defaulting to what is physically possible but not limiting to this, allowing you to create every possible and a wide range of impossible materials. And then of course you can render that, with several rendering engines to choose from depending on the look you want and the computing power and time you're willing to invest, but I usually use the ray tracing engine (simulating rays of light for most realistic result, which you shouldn't do in video games much because games have to render in real time please don't conflate my use with the crimes of AAA games). But why stop at a still image? You can animate the model, and the material if you want, and you can animate basically any property, and of course to make animation more interesting you can rig it to a skeleton (usually how characters are animated) (includes inverse and forward kinematics of course) or do physics simulation including fluid/smoke/fire simulation, soft and rigid body simulation, and cloth simulation. They've made some changes to simulation and hair since I last looked at those aspects so I'm not totally in the loop on the details but it's good and only getting better. Ok cool you've got your little animation and you can render it to a little video, neat, but it's just in a void? Do you have to model the whole background too? Well, you can, or (I'm gonna oversimplify and gloss over a lot of differences and unique challenges of each method here) you could use an HDRI (high dynamic range image, meaning it contains A Lot more information about lighting from a much wider range of values than a normal image... you know how you point your phone camera at a light source and the image goes dark? That's because your phone camera has a lower dynamic range than human eyes, it can only see a small range of light or dark values at a time), or, hey, if you do have a video camera, you can try something really fun... camera tracking. If you film a video of real life, with the camera moving around, you can plug that video into Blender and with some help it can figure out exactly how the camera is moving through space! This means, you can make the virtual camera inside Blender move the exact same way around the animation you made, and you can then render that video and lay it over the footage you took and BAM your 3D object is now in that scene! It might still look off, of course, if it doesn't cast a shadow on the ground or if it's reflective and clearly not reflecting its surroundings, but there are solutions to all these issues and if you're like me it'll turn into a fun little puzzle.

And that's just. Just scratching the surface ok? I just. Love Blender. I love that it's free and open source. If you have a computer and time you can just. Make a movie with amazing special effects and yes yes we love practical effects but trust me digital effects are not evil they're just overused because it's not unionized so it's cheaper labor but you can't tell me it isn't cool that you could make a photorealistic video of a dragon landing on your own rooftop without paying for software or putting up with ads or risking malware with piracy it's legal it's free it's fun. I will not tell you it's not time consuming but I will tell you it's cool and free*

*I recognize not everyone has free access to a video camera, internet, a computer, and enough electricity to run it

Anyway that's my summary of why I love Blender. "That's not a summary, Maws." Trust me. This is the short version.

[andmaybegayer]

I think most americans look at a house as a primary store of wealth because there isn't really anything else available to store wealth in.

If you keep your money in a bank, you are losing single digit percentages of value every year (or double digit last year depending on how you do the math). Stock market investments are dubious on the best of days if you don't already possess the vast quantities of wealth needed to mitigate risk effectively, and most americans alive today have lived through multiple major recessions now, they know exactly how bad those can get. Motor vehicles don't typically last longer than a decade and a half even with the best maintenance possible, and other big ticket items that hold onto value well like businesses or resource rich property are inaccessible to someone who isn't interested in dedicating themselves to maintaining them.

By contrast, a house is something you benefit from very directly by owning, will maintain by virtue of needing to live in it, and are offered a variety of legal protections and insurance options to mitigate much of the risk of ownership. It may not make for an ideal society, but it does make sense from the perspective of someone who would like to try and actually accumulate wealth during their lifetime.

I do get the appeal of homeownership from a flexibility and personal benefit thing, not having to wait for some asshole to tell you you can't hang pictures is great, but I think for every person who values control over their home, there's someone else who just wants a place to live for the next two years.

The faulty instinct is that the house is the valuable part, as noted by that article. Buying a house as a store of value only works if the land it's on goes up in value. Buying land in bumfuck nowhere because you want to buy a house isn't a good idea, and buying land in a valuable area is probably beyond most people who are worried about where to direct their very limited funds.

I'm not as convinced as you about the idea that a modern diversified index fund is worse than landownership (especially for the non-ultra-wealthy) for your median American living in suburbs outside of high-demand city centers. I'm also not sure land is much less resilient to financial crashes, especially if you're still paying off your mortgage on pre-crash pricing.

Any idiot can invest in your basic Vanguard mutual fund without having to save up $25+k on a downpayment, versus what, like $2000 minimum initial investment for Vanguard? I don't know what S&P500 minimums are like. And they strongly tend to beat inflation year on year without the ongoing costs of home maintenance, bubble risk, and risk of just getting a crap location that doesn't improve.

That's to say nothing of significant transaction fees, land and property taxes, and overhead if you ever need to move homes. It's also much easier to continuously siphon off a little money to put into a mutual fund than it is to add money to a house.

Of course, stock prices crash, but that tends to coincide with housing price crashes, and it's harder to weather out a housing price crash with a huge mortgage to pay off than it is to weather leaving your investments to recover, especially if you're dealing with them in the long view. There's definitely certain situations where a house is a sensible investment but I think that's rarely the best reason to buy a house.