whodoyouthinkithinkiam

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

I've had long struggles with depression for a long time, starting sometime in high school, but it took me a very long time to understand that I was suffering from anxiety too, and that the anxiety was feeding into the depression.

One of the things that people say about Worth the Candle is that everyone is always second-guessing things, always talking everything to death, always approaching every conversation with three layers of "how are they modeling how I'm modeling them". And I think that at the time it was written, I just didn't realize that my internal experience of anxiety, of constantly trying to map out how people would react to things, was not normal.

So in the past few years I've started to understand this side of myself better, to see the ways in which I'm a collection of maladaptive behaviors. Sometimes I have a conversation with someone, and even in the middle of it I'm worrying about how I'm coming off, and then worry that the worrying is showing through, and run through a scenario where I try to defuse the tension that this double layer of oozing anxiety has caused, and would that be awkward? And it's a miracle that I can get through a conversation while my brain is doing all this extra processing, all of which is functionally useless to me and whoever I'm talking to.

In writing, I'm not sure it comes off as anxious. It looks analytical, which is maybe just my preferred coping strategy for anxiety. It's one of the things that I've been looking at and trying to step back from, to expand by understanding of how other people think by trying to model it on the page.

But of course it was difficult to model people correctly when I thought that everyone was a prone to anxiety as I am.

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Hey plant man, I like your plant posts. Should give us a lil plant post to rotate in our brains if you have some time. Take this as permission to sling spaghetti at the wall for whatever Plant Stuff has been in ur head

(I also feel like i should tell you that I cannot for the life of me remember when I started following this blog but going through your lichen posts had me telling all my direct family members how much lichen now baffles me, so thank u for reminding me that Science Does Not Know All)

for years i've strongly envisioned a plant museum exhibit i would make if i ever became the guy who got to do that. imagine the biggest wall in the exhibit dedicated to showing how lepidodentrons became modern plants (and it would be utilized for that instead of some crowd pleaser dinosaur because of isoetes favoritism for me only, i would insist the space be used like that instead of something more cohesive. I would take the public and say LOOK AT IT). it starts at the left side with a life-sized lepidodendron silhouette and shows species getting smaller and smaller along the wall until the far right, where there's an aquairium with isoetes collected from the closest healthy isoetes population, preferably in the same area so people can be like 'whoa so close to us'.

version two of this exhibit would be to just have a tank of local isoetes beside a life-sized lepidodendron silhouette or replica so you could compare the sizes more directly. version three of this exhibit would be to put a tank of isoetes at that place in scotland that has the grove of fossilized lepidodendron stumps still upright in place from when their grove got flooded for the last time.

any of these would have merch in the gift shop too by the way.

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Clearing out the "yeah, okay, I admit I'm never gonna finish these" fanart bits & bobs of 2024.

- Jake in the rearview mirror of a headspace car, seeing that he's age-regressed

- Marc hanging out by the window in his briefs, from that Marvel Fanfare one-shot

- Two deleted scenes from some comics I otherwise finished, featuring Marlene, Stained Glass Scarlet, Echo (at some point I knew what she was supposed to be signing), and Marc

ETA: commenter notes that Echo is signing "...again"! So Scarlet was probably saying "your love interests are at risk of being fridged to give you angst"

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

I agree with almost all of this, but the version of the monster thing that I saw was clearly people with chronic pain fantasizing about being cared for by someone who wasn't inconvenienced by it. If there's another version of that concept going around that's more dismissive of the existing stories then I guess I'm not talking about that.

there's a fascinating type of post on this site which boils down to "what if, instead of being cliché, such-and-such work of fiction instead dodged all genre tropes in a way that instead made it really boring"

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Got my preordered copy of Book 4! Inconveniently, my six-year-old daughter saw the packaging and pleaded to open it with me. Though I knew what was inside, I opened it, and she immediately wanted to read the brightly-coloured Kidd Commander book. I resisted the urge to punt it off with the more-pressing "it's time for school" excuse and got to the heart of the matter: she couldn't read it until she was older. "But..." she cried plaintively, "it says 'Kid'!"

Aw hey thanks for checking in, I'm so glad it arrived safely!! I'm delighted to hear the packaging and everything looked like a fun time for a six year old and also Sorry For The Trouble; right down to "but it has the word Kid in it" this happens a LOT more often than one would think lmfao

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Oh, so that's why White Wolf revoked Onyx Path's license to make Chronicles of Darkness.

(I still doubt it will have the effect they want. I'd be surprised if any Chronicles-preferrer would rather go back to WoD 5E than the new replacement Onyx Path is putting out, and there are enough Chronicles books out that I feel confident I can keep coming up with new character ideas for it for the rest of my life. Meanwhile, Onyx Path is putting all their writing effort into Curseborne now, so the people who need an endless stream of new content just got a brand new one by known-good authors.)

[this is about TSR/BD&D] How do you lose a competition with yourself?

(With reference to this post here.)

In broad terms, "competing with oneself" means you're producing multiple product lines which are directly competing for the same target audience. This can be more or less bad, depending on the nature of the products in question.

In TSR's case, they had multiple game lines going simultaneously whose essential business model was churning out a constant flow of supplements and licensed novels in order to drive sales of the core books, which was where they made their real money. In this specific scenario, self-competition is a big problem, because it multiplies the number of supplements you end up having to produce for relatively little actual gain in terms of core-book sales, since all of your games are competing for the same player base.

(It would have been a problem even without that wrinkle, because manufacturing printed media is intensely sensitive to economies of scale, so selling n copies of two different books is typically considerably less profitable than selling 2n copies of one book, but the particulars of TSR's business model definitely made it a lot worse.)

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

I wrote this anecdote up as a reply to another post, but no matter what I did it sounded like I was disagreeing with their main point, which I actually agree with, so I'll post it alone.

Once, I was playing an old-school Vampire: the Masquerade LARP, the kind that used Rock-Paper-Scissors as a "randomizer". I'm not very good at RPS as a rule, but one night, in a combat scene, I was having a very good streak.

A friend complimented me between turns (combat scenes being the only time it is appropriate to do such things in a LARP). I replied, "Yeah, I'm too readable, so I'm actually just rolling this dice to pick my next move," taking the d3 from my pocket.

My friend (who, it should be noted, was one of our best RPS players) gave an incredulous snort-laugh and said, "Isn't that cheating?" Not in the way of someone who is genuinely scandalized, but as one might expect from someone whose friend just loudly admitted to cheating right in front of the ST.

The ST (generally a Serious Business sort) turned away from the scene he was running to say, "No, that is great. Everyone should be doing that. Real-life skills get tested in this game, but Rock-Paper-Scissors should not be one of them."

Mister Good-At-RPS's jaw actually dropped. I hadn't realized until then that he knew he was good at RPS, or that he'd thought that was the same thing as being good at Vampire: the Masquerade... or that he'd thought that everyone agreed with that.

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Only if first calibrated with a gyro-controlled Sine-Wave Director, the output of which is of the cathode follower type. If only Cosine-wave Directors are available, their output must be first fed into a Phase Inverter with parametric negative-time compensators.

Would a turbo encabulator pay child support?

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

I'm sure OP is tired by now of the fact that every single reply is a proposed example of Ironic Magic (and man, there are some good ones there), but I finally worked out the work that had been itching at the back of my mind since reading the initial description:

Mage: the Ascension is an RPG where magic is caused by human belief. It's set in what looks like the modern world, but the rulebook makes it clear that all human technology, including basic stuff like agriculture, only works because everyone in the world believes it does. A few hundred years ago, a group calling themselves the Technocracy worked their most impressive magic to date, the Industrial Revolution, and through it took over the world. PCs are assumed to be a member of one of the last few dying magical traditions, which don't work so well any more because the Technocracy convinced people they wouldn't.

PCs (assuming you're not playing Technocracy) basically know about how the Technocracy conquered the world by convincing the masses their stuff worked, but at the same time, are expected to "know" that they are an initiate of one of the last magical traditions, and not really be aware of the fact that their stuff only works because they believe it does.

Your party is supposed to believe they are, essentially, different D&D classes using different power sources. Sure, when a Cleric casts Cure Light Wounds it's the same spell write-up as when an Alchemist does it, but they're calling on completely different magic systems when they do, y'know? But when a Celestial Chorister sings life back into their ally, it's the exact same spell as when a Son of Ether gives them an elixir, and the exact same as when a Technocrat NWO Agent uses cutting-edge healing goo. Life magic isn't even a favoured ability for any of them. The power, in every case, comes from within.

Players, of course, have to know all this stuff. Even if you never read the rulebook, it's right there on your character sheet.

Fake Hard Magic

Here's the beginner's distinction between hard magic and soft magic, just to set up some terms.

Hard magic systems have well-defined rules, limitations, and costs. They operate almost like a science, with consistent and predictable outcomes.

Soft magic systems, in contrast, maintain a sense of wonder and mystery. The rules are deliberately kept vague or unexplained, and magic often feels more mysterious and unpredictable.

One of the problems I've always had with this is this question: from whose perspective?

Fake hard magic comes when the magic "has rules" and "has limitations" within the logic of the story's world, but these rules aren't explained to the reader. The wizard has the aesthetic of science, he uses rulers and graphs, to him this is a science. But everything the wizard says must be taken for granted, because nothing that's said will ever help the reader to understand what's actually going on. It's "hard magic" on the character's level, but not the reader's.

Here's my chart!

Systemic magic is the type of hard magic that I would put the typical Brandon Sanderson story under. It's known to both character and reader, the rules are laid out and inform the plot, the reader can extrapolate from the rules, etc. Most "true" hard magic systems go here. There's a weaker version of this, where we have narrative rules, which I guess I would also put in this category. If we know that magic can start fires that burn plants, and this is set up such that in the climax someone does this, it's technically here, even if no mechanisms for how fire starts are related. There is a narrative expectation that sets up a narrative execution. The character knows, the reader knows, even if this is a single example of what's supposed to be a larger, more complex system.

Soft and "fake hard" are grouped together, and in practice this is just a matter of set dressing. I contend that a magic system does not become a hard magic system just because a wizard is wearing a lab coat and everyone in the story is treating the magic with science words and ISO standards.

Wild magic isn't quite right for its quadrant, but it's a variety of "soft magic" that no one in the story is pretending to understand, which does not follow concrete rules, and which comes and goes from the story on its own whims, usually to punctuate a point rather than to drive or resolve the plot. Quite a bit of magical realism belongs here.

Ironic magic is, as far as I know, theoretical. The reader understands the magic systems and the rules that it operates under, but the characters do not. I cannot recall seeing this, I do not think it has been directly named by anyone, but it's definitely a form of literary irony.

As simple as this is, there's a third viewpoint, which would make this into a three-dimensional grid: the author. It's very possible that the author has a written out comprehensive system, which the reader is just never privy to, and this is a slight wrinkle, but not a major one. Functionally, it's the same to the reader, unless they can point out some glaring contradictions in the text. Also, this would imply the existence of octants where the author is clueless but the reader knows what's happening, and ... I doubt there's a way for that to happen, unless you mean that readers construct a working system in the wake of what the author has written.

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Recently I took my family to visit my grandfather, who I hadn't seen in a year and the rest of them hadn't in two and a half. He's 96 and his mind's still sharp.

Every so often, he kept saying "So, what's new?" and we'd respond awkwardly, because not much had happened in a while. School, illness, work, more school, more illness, more work. Whatever.

After we left, my wife pointed out that that was probably "older gentleman with no script for this" speak for "So, I see your husband is now your wife. Could you please do me the honour of reintroducing her?"

In my defense, it's been a while!

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Do the Tech-Priests in Warhammer 40K count as "Ironic Magic"? Neither the Priests nor the readers/players really understand the "magic system", but the readers know a lot more than the Priests do, such as that the liturgies to the Omnissiah do nothing.

Fake Hard Magic

Here's the beginner's distinction between hard magic and soft magic, just to set up some terms.

Hard magic systems have well-defined rules, limitations, and costs. They operate almost like a science, with consistent and predictable outcomes.

Soft magic systems, in contrast, maintain a sense of wonder and mystery. The rules are deliberately kept vague or unexplained, and magic often feels more mysterious and unpredictable.

One of the problems I've always had with this is this question: from whose perspective?

Fake hard magic comes when the magic "has rules" and "has limitations" within the logic of the story's world, but these rules aren't explained to the reader. The wizard has the aesthetic of science, he uses rulers and graphs, to him this is a science. But everything the wizard says must be taken for granted, because nothing that's said will ever help the reader to understand what's actually going on. It's "hard magic" on the character's level, but not the reader's.

Here's my chart!

Systemic magic is the type of hard magic that I would put the typical Brandon Sanderson story under. It's known to both character and reader, the rules are laid out and inform the plot, the reader can extrapolate from the rules, etc. Most "true" hard magic systems go here. There's a weaker version of this, where we have narrative rules, which I guess I would also put in this category. If we know that magic can start fires that burn plants, and this is set up such that in the climax someone does this, it's technically here, even if no mechanisms for how fire starts are related. There is a narrative expectation that sets up a narrative execution. The character knows, the reader knows, even if this is a single example of what's supposed to be a larger, more complex system.

Soft and "fake hard" are grouped together, and in practice this is just a matter of set dressing. I contend that a magic system does not become a hard magic system just because a wizard is wearing a lab coat and everyone in the story is treating the magic with science words and ISO standards.

Wild magic isn't quite right for its quadrant, but it's a variety of "soft magic" that no one in the story is pretending to understand, which does not follow concrete rules, and which comes and goes from the story on its own whims, usually to punctuate a point rather than to drive or resolve the plot. Quite a bit of magical realism belongs here.

Ironic magic is, as far as I know, theoretical. The reader understands the magic systems and the rules that it operates under, but the characters do not. I cannot recall seeing this, I do not think it has been directly named by anyone, but it's definitely a form of literary irony.

As simple as this is, there's a third viewpoint, which would make this into a three-dimensional grid: the author. It's very possible that the author has a written out comprehensive system, which the reader is just never privy to, and this is a slight wrinkle, but not a major one. Functionally, it's the same to the reader, unless they can point out some glaring contradictions in the text. Also, this would imply the existence of octants where the author is clueless but the reader knows what's happening, and ... I doubt there's a way for that to happen, unless you mean that readers construct a working system in the wake of what the author has written.

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Swallowed by the fog

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

TIL that the reason lead levels in children’s blood have dropped 85% in the past thirty years is because of an unknown scientist who fought car companies to end leaded gasoline. He also removed it from paint, suggested its removal from pipes, and campaigned for the removal of lead solder from cans.

via ift.tt

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

I'm missing the point too, but potatoes would have completely changed Europe's tax system, which heavily relied on the crowns' ability to threaten to take all of the peasants' grain. If they had food that could be harvested whenever you needed it, instead of having to be harvested all at once and then preserved or stored in large silos, peasants would have been more able to resist the demands of the nobility.

I read a very good essay on this topic but I can't find it, so have this much-less-detailed-and-sourced Reddit exchange instead.

(This also makes me wonder, if the meeting of the continents had been more equitable, which Afro-Eurasian crops would have transformed the Americas the way the potato did Europe, instead of colonists just wholesale replacing the flora.)

👀

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

In the city where I grew up, there was a little strip mall on a corner that was like this. Mostly the businesses were less faddish, but equally doomed: things like Szechuan restaurants that just wouldn't work in the conservative little city.

Anyway, the funniest part was when the local MP moved his office there and, within six months, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada no longer existed.

i love commercial real estate that is essentially zoned exclusively for momentary fad businesses that will go bankrupt. hmm, ok, we are the 8th comic book store in this zip code, and, fuck, uhh, ok nobody is going to any comic book stores anywhere, hmm, ok, vape lounge, old robot style vapes, yep nope ok we don't really sell anything and we're bankrupt. now we're a Vape Store. ok we're the 8th one on this block. ok. they've changed the locks. hmm. what's next. Axe Throwing, Axe Throwing Will Be The Nex-oh, shit, fuck. ok. I got it. We sell fake weed.

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

I remember feeling the same way. "If the player did not want to be tempted, why did they play a Paladin?" It's just sensible.

Then one day, a DM presented a group I was playing in with a dilemma. A Paladin had done something, ah, controversial (I was not tempted to think it was evil, but was aware that many people would have). We were supposed to figure out what to do about it.

And one of the other players said, "Has he fallen? Can he summon a magic horse? Then it's fine, let's go."

It wasn't exactly a compelling gameplay experience, but I suddenly understood why people wanted to play Paladins and not have it be about the temptations of falling. They wanted to be that shining light, to have others see them and know for sure at a glance that they had never once in their adventuring career done an evil deed.

It's a compelling fantasy if you think about it. A power fantasy for people plagued by doubts. And then other people notice the affordances the game offers and reasonably (if incorrectly) go, "Ah, this player wants to be plagued by doubts!" No, they came here because they wanted the exact opposite, but the error in the game design is very subtle.

Game Pile: The Affordances of Atonement

Watch this video on YouTube

This is a video of my article on this I wrote a few years ago!

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[whodoyouthinkithinkiam]

Gather around, my young friends and fellow dinosaurs, let me tell you about some BULLSHIT no one ever tells you about. I'm talking about menopause and perimenopause. Now, menopause has a very stringent medical definition. You have to not have had a period for exactly 12 months and a day to be considered in menopause. All the bullshit before that day once you start going through The Change is considered perimenopause. Here's some bullshit you might experience that people actually talk about when you're in perimenopause:

- shorter time between periods

- irregular periods

- hot flashes and/or cold flashes

- fucked up sleep

- OMG NIGHT SWEATS

- Vagina as dry as the Sahara desert

- lighter periods and/or endless bleeding like it's The Flood but it's in your pants

- lack of interest in Adult Fun Times

This time of joy can last anywhere from a couple of years to a god damn decade and there's no medical way right now to predict it.

Here's some of the REAL bullshit they don't tell you about but your dinosaur aunt is here to let you know:

- You can start perimenopause in your 30s, don't listen to idiot doctors who tell you you're "too young" because they don't know your body like you do.

- Perimenopause will make you HELLA DUMB. Seriously, I'm talking Bigly broken brain. Brain fog? Check. Short term memory? Wave goodbye to it. Ability to make words form out of thoughts? Yeah, good luck to you.

- Perimenopause can cause horrible fatigue because in addition to losing estrogen, you're also losing testosterone. Oh and that also leads to muscle wasting, cool cool.

- Things might suddenly hurt more because estrogen is known to be neuroprotective.

- If you're super lucky like I am, and like to collect rare illnesses, you might even get Burning Mouth Syndrome 💀

- And meanwhile, while you're going through this bullshit, you'll be getting gaslit by doctors who are operating based on 30 year old debunked data about how HRT causes breast cancer (not really) and that they shouldn't put you on it until you're in actual menopause. (Data shows starting HRT early can potentially prevent Alzheimer's in later years.)

- There are entire online clinics right now (I use Midi Health) focused on providing care for peri and menopausal patients and they will happily prescribe you HRT even if your regular PCP or OBGYN do not (if you meet the criteria). I've been pretty impressed with how holistically they view the patient. For full disclosure, I learned about them from my integrative health doctor and they do not accept Medicare (yet).

I'm 46 years old right now and I've been symptomatic for perimenopause for the last 8 years, although it's gotten the most dramatic in the past 2 years or so, which I hope means I'm almost done, holy hell. Yeah I was on the early side, but if it can happen to me, it can happen to you, so it's never too early to think about these things. And I hope to at least spare some of you the mind-fuckery I've been through because no one told me about most of this stuff, including my own mother who just DOESN'T REMEMBER what happened to her and now I completely understand why. And because I also have a connective tissue disease, I used to just dismiss my pain and fatigue as being caused by that illness rather than the loss of hormones.

Anyways, this is why we need Elders in our lives, so they can do Grandma Story Hour like I just did and validate you when the entire medical field tries to gaslight you. I hope you've found some or all of this educational/useful. Please share with your friends because we really do NOT talk about this stuff enough. (Ewwww Moon Blood!)

Stay well, and don't let the bastards grind you down!