…a large amount of workers trapped within a hostile environment in total darkness, with constantly low temperatures and no ample supply of food. The continued survival of the ‘colony’ through the years is dependent on new workers falling in through the ventilation pipe. The supplement of workers more than compensates for the mortality rate of workers such that through the years the bunker workforce has grown to the level of big, mature natural colonies.
So, 1. imagine if we weren’t talking about ants
2. remember that we are – what we have here is a giant colony made purely out of workers, in a nuclear facility in Poland.
Reading Erik Jensen’s thoughts about his campaign design and listening to Tom Waits’s Orphans (which is really like grubbing through Tom Waits’s attic – it’s tracks he recorded but never previously put on records), it occurs to me:
most of us spend a lot of time trawling the same old blues, looking to fish up a bit of weed that catches our attention, that can blossom into something new. And when you’re stomping along that old tune it feels like there will never be anything new in the world but really it’s a kind of meditative exercise. You know something’s there, you’ve got to keep that beat going to get to that fruitful moment.
What attracts me in the music and, I guess, in designs of all kinds is when something is off, deliberately slightly wrong, unexpected. The surprise has a little frisson of its own but more importantly there’s also the hint that a new door might be opening in the old corridor, you (the listener) might be able to chase this frisson down into a whole other world. Tom often starts from a place that’s deliberately as off as he can manage but still ends up with a familiar Puritan hymn. But sometimes it goes somewhere else, and that’s why I keep listening.
My point is, that old blues stomp is important, too. It’s tempting to make everything as original and brilliant as you can but then you lose the recognition of that moment, that off note, which is where the reader glimpses a new vista and can start creating right along with you.
Do you guys have this process where the first draft of anything you write is completely impenetrable to anyone else so then you have to rewrite it 5 times to get it into a language other people can understand?
The champ’s stooges used to be known as the Bollywood boys. Indian champion on Smackdown and the WWE is doing this in part to make serious in roads into India as a market to sell their product to.
The kind that’s full of items that are reasonably available, but which aren’t rote bits of the adventuring cannon that we’re all tired of by now? The kind where a player looks over it and goes “Oh, hey, a hand drill. I never thought about that before, I bet I could make some good use of it in the dungeon.”
I know Courtney Campbell wrote a good one for Numenhalla, but I don’t know if it was ever publicly available. John Bell had a pretty good one for Necrocarserous though:
Roll your level or less on a d20. You may get the bonus/penalty of the post applicable attribute.
…..I tend to get people to roll under the appropriate attribute or sometimes half of it (round down) but most often I really just want either a 50% chance or a “really impress me” roll. I think this mechanic could work for the latter (because I don’t usually deal with people over 5th level).
just in case anyone was wondering, I’m not being investigated.
Hear that, Kislyak? (is this thing on?) I’M NOT BEING INVESTIGATED.
I feel a bit torn, honestly. On the one hand, let’s expose criminal activity in the White House. On the other, this barrel-aged Russophobia goes down smooth but it’s still spicy!
Geographer and historian Al-Muqaddasi once satirically categorized competing madhahib with contrasting personal qualities: Hanafites, highly conscious of being hired for official positions, appeared deft, well-informed, devout and prudent; Malikites, dull and obtuse, confined themselves to observance of prophetic tradition; Shafi’ites were shrewd, impatient, understanding and quick-tempered; Zahirites haughty, irritable, loquacious and well-to-do; Shi’ites, entrenched and intractable in old rancor, enjoyed riches and fame; and Hanbalites, anxious to practice what they preached, were charitable and inspiring.
Look, I agree with Dale and Thomas of GURPS Goblins fame that stereotypes are useful to harassed DMs for generating memorable NPCs on the fly. But I also note that of all possible example useful stereotypes they offer Swedish sailors, whom they make strong but dim. Because, I suppose, the real stereotype of Swedish sailors is that they don’t mind a bit of lighthearted stereotyping.
My new bestest BAE/BFF/Frodo clued me in to this winning podcast and I insist that there is much to be gamed in here and it’s so funny I nearly crashed my car laughing and tears and methylamines and eugenics! Hoo hoo hoo that’s the stuff
Thanks, bestie! Also, you stay away from my bestie, you trollops. It’s Jason Kielbasa BTW
Trump news is coming in faster than I can follow it, but the thing that really blows my mind is that any of these people could retire and live comfortably off of speaking fees and royalties from their horseshit ghost-written memoir. They really don’t have to do any of this.
The Trump presidency is the discovery that what you thought was a man in a bear suit is just a bear… In retrospect, you should have suspected that after he just straight-up ate a guy. But at the time everyone cheered. It was good TV.
There are many bad things about the Trump administration but one good thing is that newspapers like the Washington Post have become funnier and more surreal.
This isn’t really politics but it’s been exiled to this collection because asking people to read more words about Trump is frankly cruel at this point. Still, I recommend this one.
Originally shared by Rhys Taylor
This makes a lot of sense. Via Gilmoure deTrimar.
The people in there with him are the people who did not realize that what they had on their hands was an animal. Now they are trying to whisper him, like a horse. Do horses understand whispering? Horses probably think that people are just conspiring against them all the time. Horses are probably quite paranoid and delusional. But at least a horse would not fire the FBI director.
The Singleton/Flint fight for control of the ship, the plot and the narrative that will be taken for truth holds 2 things of relevance to the old, old story-through-play vs. co-operative drama argument:
1. Matt makes the point that Singleton’s sword breaking is “possible but unlikely.” That’s exactly where I like my RPGs to be – right in that territory where you go “really? Yeah, I guess so.” That’s the sort of player thinking that I appreciate as a DM – “I’m going to try this risky thing and maybe it won’t work but if it does, it’ll be great.” Essence of story through play.
2. We the viewers don’t know it yet, but Flint represents royalism against Singleton’s already-declared grudgingly-democratic republicanism. But all through the fight, Flint’s the scrappy underdog and Singleton’s a prison-yard bully – Flint is resourceful, usually disciplined, maintains a guard – we can tell he’s thinking hard how to overcome Singleton’s guardless, brute overconfidence. But then at the end, Flint reveals how brutish he can be – the mask of aristos slips and young Billy sees it. This is what’s necessary to maintain his position and Flint does not hesitate to degrade himself.
– that’s foreshadowing, it’s dramatic consequences, it’s plot-through-character. And the directorial decision to linger on the revelatory power of that moment relies on an omniscient author’s understanding of who the character is – who we will come to learn he is – that the player doesn’t have when their understanding of their character is only being revealed to them by the game.
We tend to discuss story-through-play as if it’s a decision the DM makes, but it’s really most of all about what the player can know at any given point.
Originally shared by Fraser Ronald
Love it when Matt Easton uses visuals like this and explains both what we are seeing and what we should be seeing.
I am embarrassed that it took me this long to realise the strong links between Blade Runner and Frankenstein.
In my defense, when I was growing up BR was the new moody hotness and Frankenstein’s monster was a Scooby Doo figure that struggled to connect with its authentic Boris Karloff roots.
hunting through old photocopies, I just ran across my favourite short article from all my researches – “A Manuscript account of his services by Lieut. o’Brien Casey, RN” in the May 1957 Numismatic Circular (Spink & Son, London).
I like it so much (a) because it’s a first-hand account of the exceptionally bloody mutiny on the Hermione and (b) because the only reason I ever learned about it was that a photocopy of it was slipped into one of the binders of references at the archives of the High Court of Admiralty at Kew, where I happened to be looking for papers seized from captured ships in wartime. I am not in the habit of reading the Numismatic Circular (although perhaps I should be).
I still have yet to actually read those captured ship papers, but the Hermione mutiny is a thing I return to every so often, thinking about when I’m going to get around to writing a big article on British mutineers and renegades.
It’s likely a whale, but I’m sticking this story here because it apparently was wounded, likely by something bigger, or at least more vicious, before it died and washed to shore.
This joint mosque/madrasa/caravanserai is built on the classic 4 iwan plan, its modest pishtaq gates reflecting its minor placement, by the side of the road into town. The traveler can see from a distance that it offers ecumenical instruction in all four major Sunni schools of law, the assymmetry of its facades speaking of different spatial and therefore mental organization in each of its wings. Detached structures include baths, a small hospital and a garden around the founder’s simple headstone.
bonus linky for the Black Sails post – a brief movie on how they put the effects shots together and why there’s no physical ship for all their efforts. See if you can spot the deliberate mistake in the final town-bombardment sequence.
I pretty much gave up on my blog when wordpress took away the ability to post pictures at full size. Now they’ve given it back but sneakily hidden it, leading to sub-optimal formatting. If anyone wants to recommend a better blog-hosting site I’d love to know.
Anyway.
Does anachronistic styling of ships bother you? Can you tell the difference between a 17th century galleon and an 18th century frigate? Have you ever bothered watching Black Sails? 3 questions that might answer whether you should bother with this post.
OK, this one is definitely courting bad karma. I sincerely hope I haven’t written anything like this in my recent efforts. Also from of Ships and the Sea.
Went looking for a specific thing at Jeff’s Gameblog, came away with this instead.
It’s always rewarding going for a stroll through those posts. It’s like a garden of gonzo.
“You amputate your own arm. It writhes for a while before falling still. 2 days later, it reanimates as a zombie arm and relentlessly attempts to strangle you.”
OK people. What if I told you I was finally planning to run Counter-colonial Heistcrawl, starting in 3 weeks from today, to run 9:30pm EDT on Wednesday or Thursday nights (ETA or potentially Monday or Tuesday nights). Who would be interested?
LotFP rules rather than my fancy-schmancy banding together rules, in the interests of actually getting it running. I may add FS banding rules later.
I tell you what, though: we have rules for ships and sea fights. Oh yes we do. Rules for pokemon wrangling are coming.
Paolo – am I too late to give mageblade feedback on the latest drive doc? Do you want me to do a committed proofread, more general feedback, what?
….I mean the vehicular shenanigans. Also getting back to the merchants and mongrels on the silk road thing: I have ideas of what to add change, do you?
OK people. What if I told you I was finally planning to run Counter-colonial Heistcrawl, starting in 3 weeks from today, to run 9:30pm EDT on Wednesday or Thursday nights (ETA or potentially Monday or Tuesday nights). Who would be interested?
….in case anyone doesn’t know, CCH is my longest-running vapourware indefinitely-postponed campaign ever. But this time I’m ready.
It’s 1610, you play natives of an alternate history Southeast Asia. The Dutch and English have shown up and want to colonize you and seize all your valuables. What are you going to do about it?
This got me thinking – not about dieselpunk for a change but about Srivijaya.
Specifically, about how the heyday of Srivijaya is contemporary with the rises of Islam, the Venetian Republic and the Vikings, and now I want to make a game about that encounter.
Out of those 4, the Islamic Red Sea/Persian Gulf and Srivijaya are the most “central” – the biggest and most influential power centers – and the Vikings are the most marginal. But they’re each important to themselves, and their reach is long and their commitment great.
The main obstacle is geography. So maybe it’s as simple as redrawing the map. It’s the year 800. East Africa has just traded places with Scandinavia, Venice has swapped with the Champa kingdom in Vietnam. What does the fight for control of the Indian Ocean look like? On the other side, maybe it’s 1200 between the Baltic and the Mediterranean – how do Great Zimbabwe and the Cham gunpowder-enthusiasts affect the European balance of power?
Originally shared by Khairul Hisham
Dieselpunk Nusantara hybrid character design for a commission. 8-12th century Srivijaya warrior merged with WW1 troop complete with a Hotchkiss M1914 machine gun.
Part 87 in a 3253 part series work “the end of the world and the plight of the mac user as a sub-genre of the experience of late high capitalism.”
Not pictured: all the new dongles that you need in order to plug anything into last year’s macbook, apple’s most austere statement to date in terms of compatibility with the market.
Following the modus operandi of the artist, the new dongles will only be acquired and documented when their obsolescence can be attested.
1. damn, this is good. Go read it. I’m adopting it or something like it for this other thing IMm writing for Paolo Greco
2. this:
We have this gift of D&D – a game where we have unlimited creative budgets because we have imaginations – and instead we waste our time tracking hexes, miles, minutes, torches and pounds. Disgusting.
I just got finished writing a draft of some rules that suffer badly from this. I was vaguely unhappy with the beancountiness of them but this throws it into sharp relief.
It’s the thing people want to know but nobody wants to talk about it. Sometimes rates seem to be pulled out of the air or determined mostly by what an artist thinks a client will be willing to pay.
Not me.
I want to have integrity in what I do. I hope you do to. So, let me talk about my process and my rates openly. Maybe this will help you.
HOURLY RATE
First, determine what hourly rate you need where you are.
As a husband and father of four, I need around $20 an hour to adequately provide for my family.
ADMINISTRATIVE DUTIES
As a freelancer, you need to know how much of your work week is spent on administrative (non-paying) duties. These may be things like client conferences, advertising your services, updating products, additional training, etc.
I spend at least 25% of my work week on these activities.
PAID LEAVE
Would you like to take an occasional vacation? Want to be able to afford some sickness? If you do, these need to be factored into your rates.
I personally take the standard 14 days of vacation and 7 sick days.
That means out of 260 working days (52 weeks x 5 days), I work about 92% of them.
DO YOUR MATH
If we take the above information and factor it into an equation, it would look something like:
[$20 an hour] divided by [75% of actual paid work activities] divided by [92% of actual days of work] = An adjust hourly rate of $29
This is my personal adjusted hourly rate. Yours may look differently.
But the math doesn’t end there.
KNOW YOUR WORK PROCESS
I have a project tracker to record how much time I spend individually on:
References, Sketches, Inks, Colors, Etc
This gives me a much better idea of how much time your project will take me to complete.
I then multiply my adjusted hourly rate by the average time spent on a given project, factor in supply fees (variable), tax (8%), copyright license fees (variable), and transaction fees (3% + $0.30) for a final total which is then adjusted (usually down a few dollars) to a more palatable cost for sales. (Example: $63.21 would become $59)
[Side Note about License Fees: I charge no additional fee for Non-Exclusive contracts. The client gets the ability to use the artwork for their one specific purpose indefinitely. I charge an additional 25% for All Rights for a Limited Purpose. My current Work for Hire contracts are set at an additional 50%. Copyrights have value. Don’t give them away. Client aren’t letting you ‘keep’ copyrights. They are already YOURS. Therefore, value your work and charge for your copyright licenses.]
So… that is my entire rate calculation process. Take it. Use it. Adjust it for you. Finally, be proud of it and stand by it.
If you have any questions/comments, don’t hesitate.
I’m attaching my Rate Matrix. Hopefully, its complexity makes it clear why I use a Rate Calculator on my site. 🙂
One thing I have often wondered, if these retrograde, simple-minded, Superstitious, anti-reason motherfuckers reject Science And All Its Perfidious Works, is there some sort of Paranormal Defense Ministry to fight off Chaos/Sex/Black/White Magick or whatever? Also, is it a fucking crime to hex the POTUS? I mean, the Storm God of the Old Israelites Protects Him, ostensibly, adulterer and usurer and philanderer and swindler that he is, but IS IT ENOUGH?
#itsgameable note: I don’t endorse casting spells at government officials but I also don’t endorse it, and don’t also endorse it thricely but it hurt none do as thou wilt is the whole of the Law, except maybe Mammon running that show now
Just started watching Black Sails. Was charmed to see Markus Rediker in the pilot, reciting the thesis of his book Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. He’s a lot better-looking IRL – I guess all the scars were a comment on his Marxist roots, plight of the working class etc.
Fanservice actively turns me off these days. I must be getting old.
Here’s the thing, though: this is most definitely not for Mature Audiences. If you shot the fights slightly differently and cut the 7 minutes of boobage it would go in the same time slot as Once Upon A Time. It’s dirty but not gritty.
And mixing characters from Treasure Island with ostensibly “real” pirates like Vane and Anne Bonney telegraphs that we’re in PotC territory – mythic methmouth.
‘“NASA has identified a variety of exploration, science, and technology demonstration objectives that could be addressed by sending instruments, experiments, or other payloads to the lunar surface,” the RFI reads. “To address these objectives as cost-effectively as possible, NASA may procure payloads and related commercial payload delivery services to the Moon (sic).”
The language seems to emphasize the role of commercial activities. Furthermore, there are references to applying such transportation services to the return of “play lands or samples” to Earth. Mined payloads fall under that umbrella. Space mining is going to be an industry driven largely by the private sector, so it makes perfect sense to have them involved in the design and implementation of transportation architecture that will move large payloads back and forth through cislunar space.
Photographer to explore the limitations of colour-matching in photographic reproduction.
….has anyone else here ever tried to puzzle out Photoshop’s color management tools?
To me, this sounds like it could be the nightmare project from hell… if you tried to do it as honestly as possible. If on the other hand you just want to make a spectrum image, it would be merely teeth-grindingly, hair-pullingly frustrating.
I smell the first reel of a standard martial arts movie. All the masters who come forward indignantly will be beaten down.
Second reel, Donnie Yen is interrupted at tea by the ruckus. He disciplines the students and restores order, probably using a variety of unlikely weapons improvised from bits of scenery.
Third reel – showdown. But then what?
– Donnie becomes a demon lord?
– Donnie looks like he gets beaten but then all the disciples he disciplined bring him back in on their backs and he’s completely fine?
– the spirit of China itself intercedes in the guise of blowing paper or a little girl orsomething and distracts the challenger?
Originally shared by John Baez
Tai chi versus mixed martial arts
You’ve probably seen those Chinese movies where fighters from one school of martial arts line up to battle a contender from another school. Now it’s happening in real life!
You may not think of tai chi as a martial art – it looks more like a form of meditation. For some experts it becomes a fighting style. But recently the mixed martial arts fighter Xu Xiadong has been saying it’s obsolete. This got tai chi masters angry! So on Monday they decided to settle this dispute with a fight: Xu Xiadong versus Wei Lei, a practitioner of the Yang style of tai chi.
Xu started the fight in a boxing stance while Wei held his arms outstretched in a crane-like pose.
The two circled each other briefly before Xu, nicknamed “Madman” by fans for his fighting style, then went in for the jugular and quickly pummelled his opponent to the ground, swiftly ending the match.
It took just 10 seconds.
The fight was staged and live-streamed after the two debated the merits of traditional Chinese martial arts online.
Wei told the Legal Evening News that Xu had crossed the line by dismissing tai chi. “Since [Xu] insulted tai chi so strongly, including cursing at our ancestors, I thought there was no room for cooperation between us,” Wei was quoted as saying.
Following his quick victory over Wei – who claimed to be the founder of a “thunder style” of tai chi – Xu wrote on his microblog: “All of China’s martial arts masters were watching … I will do what I should do. Everyone should calmly use their independent thinking abilities.”
Wei responded to the match by saying: “I lost. Everyone who wanted to get in on the fun all saw it! I lost, but it is not a problem … I accept this result.”
So, all that meditation at least brought him serenity. But that’s not the end of the story:
At least three traditional martial arts masters have picked up the gauntlet thrown down by mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Xu Xiaodong, saying they were willing to face him in combat to defend their tactics and traditions.
But exponents of traditional martial arts said that even if the challengers lost in the ring against Xu, it would not mean their approach was inferior to the modern MMA way.
Hmm.
Xu, a trained kung fu free-combat sportsman who taught himself MMA, has claimed that traditional martial arts are outdated and only good for keeping in shape. In combat, free-style fighting or boxing was more practical, The Beijing News quoted him as saying on Monday.
Xu’s comments came after he took just 10 seconds to defeat tai chi master Wei Lei – who also calls himself Lei Lei – in a fight in Chengdu, Sichuan province, last week, reigniting debate over which approach is superior. Wei is a practitioner of the Yang style of tai chi, characterised by slow, steady movements.
Xu said on his microblog that he could take on two or three traditional martial artists and a number had already accepted.
Among Xu’s challengers were two tai chi masters Lu Xing and Wang Zhanhai, Guangzhou native Li Shangxian who specialises in the Shaolin Meihua Zhuang form of Chinese boxing, and Yi Long, a monk known for his martial arts prowess.
Lu told the Chengdu Business News that he wanted to teach Xu a lesson.
“He is deeply biased against traditional martial arts and his words were insulting. I challenged him so he could have a fresh perspective of tai chi and the true traditional martial arts,” said Lu, who specialises in a form of tai chi known as tuishou, or pushing hands.
Lu said he was 80 per cent sure of winning because tai chi masters had “an iron fist, air foot and iron back, which took more than 20 years of hard training”.
Xu’s form of martial arts was more about projecting an explosive force, he said.
Wang, a Henan native who practises the Chen style of tai chi, said he decided to fight Xu to silence online dissenters.
The Chen style of tai chi is characterised by a “silk-reeling” movement that alternates fast and slow motions and bursts of power.
Yi, the fighter monk, wrote on his microblog that he would not stand for the MMA fighter insulting traditional Chinese martial arts and “deceiving the public”.
Jiang Lugui, president of the Taohua Tai Chi Research Institute under the Sichuan Martial Arts Association, said tai chi had changed over time from a combat technique to a form of exercise.
“People practice martial arts not to kill but to cultivate a healthy body. Tai chi has largely developed into a competitive sport or exercise for health,” Jiang said.
“The practical nature of tai chi, to kill or overpower someone quickly, is no longer the reason people practise it.”
And that’s a sense in which tai chi may truly be superior to mixed martial arts: not for fighting, but for self-cultivation. Still, I’m eager to see what happens next.
You can see the match between Xu Xiaodong and Wei Lei here:
So the slime kills you, melts you, absorbs you etc, but then uses your weapons to kill someone else, melt that poor soul, absorb… use their weapons to then… well you get it!
Stupid libs are triggered when the NYT hires an op-ed columnist who challenges their climate change cult, but President Trump shows his commitment to the discourse by considering the people from all sides of the political spectrum.
It’s a cheesy bit of orientalism made tolerable by Hoagie’s charm. But Hong Kong is indeed full of history and mystery, so “old Hong Kong” sounds right.
Anyway, we’re back! Today Lisa and I went to the jade market in Yau Ma Tei. Our favorite jade seller was not there: she’s visiting relatives in China. Her husband was, and he showed us some nice white jade from Xinjiang – the wild west of China. This is getting rare these days, but we decided not to buy any until the woman comes back in 10 days. It gives us an excuse to postpone difficult decisions and an excuse to return.
We also took a look in the Tin Hau temple near the jade market. Tin Hau is the god of the sea, a favorite of sailors. But the little figures shown here are some of the sixty Tai Sui deities – one for each year in a 60-year cycle formed by multiplying the 12 signs of the zodiac by the 5 phases: wood (木 mù), fire (火 huǒ), earth (土 tǔ), metal (金 jīn) and water (水 shuǐ). Like many Chinese temples I’ve seen, this one has statues of all sixty. But how they look varies immensely from temple to temple!
Then we walked north to Mong Kok, a very busy area full of shops. It was densely packed with people – maybe because it’s a long weekend with May Day coming on Monday?
Lisa was happy to see that the Mong Kok computer center, a building packed with useful small stores, has been reopened. We bought some crucial VGA/micro-D converters and went back to our hotel, exhausted but glad to be back in old Hong Kong.
1. you are air dropped on CORSICA for some kind of rescue mission. Turns out what you’re supposed to rescue is Fyre Festival 2: Return to the Fyre, which opens in 4 days. Music gangstas threaten to kill you if you don’t rescue them. The beach is covered with biting flies, the lake is toxic green, the pigs are viciously feral. Options include:
– stranding the gangstas in some trap valley inland
– pirating a luxury beach from SARDEGNA next door
– persuading the island gods to host the festival in the mountains in exchange for some final night sacrifices.
2. you win clear of CORSICA’s interior only to finda festival emergency camp set up on the egress beach. Now you are the crazy locals and they are the terrified tourists.
3. it’s exactly like the beginning of Lost except instead of a plane crash you’ve been sold a luxury festival and dumped on a beach by a Ww2 amphibious landing vehicle, which suddenly doesn’t seem so cool n funny. And more people are arriving all the time. Now the landers don’t land any more, partygoers have to wade the last 50 yards, they’re given a complimentary hotel mini rum bottle and told it’s all part of the experience.
Just watched the BBC adaptation of The Casual Vacancy.
God damn J. K. Rowling is good at laying bare the peculiarly English varieties of evil. I’m not talking melodramatic, willful fantasy evil – for that Once Upon a Time is pretty much unbeatable. No, this is deeply personal, prejudiced, gaslighting evil. Evil that only requires the complete absence of compassion.
And obviously Michael Gambon and Julia McKenzie are gleefully brilliant at it, but you knew that already.
Kevyn Winkless I’ve been really enjoying reading your half of a conversation about Foucault with someone I have blocked. I commend you for your cheerful, forthright manner and clarity! And actually I hadn’t heard the electric gradient metaphor before – interesting.
….if your interlocutor is who I think it is, I’m all the more impressed.
“Former Indonesian Attorney General Marzuki Darusman believes that the Dutch inquiry could be cathartic. ‘Such a format of getting to the truth of what happened after 1945 could be a way of resolving nearer past issues such as what happened in 1965’, he said.”
…anyone else feel like we were supposed to go d’awwww at the gay couple?
Anyone else kinda uncomfortable about this recent tendency in media to use gay couples for d’awww moments? Like it’s progress from horror or comedy, but I’m not convinced gay mascot land is where we want to be either.
Also drag queens are magic and save the day?
Still some fun, but I felt it dragged compared with part 1, which hovered right on the edge of too much self-indulgence but was rescued by its winning smile. Part 2 falls over that edge regularly and then gets back up again and keeps going. I have to admire its spirit.
Why was I holding off on talking about Trump’s border wall? For this moment:
“Eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying, in some form, for the badly needed border wall”
So. Weaselly, circumlocutive sentence structure is the new norm.
“Badly needed” is not the sort of phrase a speech-writer would ever give you.
But the real payload here is “at a later date so we can get started early.”
That’s kind of brilliant. It’s so directly and patently ridiculous that it almost gets “paying, in some form” off the hook. Everyone knows that nothing here is serious. Doing it later so you can get started early slips the whole statement out of the tiresome bonds of reality – the tweet now floats freely in the signifier clouds of Trump’s waffle. And so now he’s said Mexico will pay “in some form” (some imaginary form, I guess) but in such a way that you can believe whatever you want.
A supplement nobody wants: a completely serious, meticulously-researched RPG guide to steam warships of the later 19th century –
Ironclads of Empire, 1865-1905
Just the totally crazy, real historical designs that were never tested during the “revolution in the dark” that transformed naval power between the Monitor and the Dreadnought.
Pro: it’s mostly unseen, wild stuff
Con: it’s not as wild as everybody else’s Steampunk.
Paolo Greco I realize that I have to get better at communicating when I’m thinking about something!
…I got your document a couple of days ago and I’ve also had your other thing open for like 2 weks and it’s because I’ve been ruminating but not ready to say anything. Sorry about that, I should let you know.
This came up in my feed next to a “Foucault ruined my civilization” post and now I want to make an evil postmodernist reality-punching Chaos Monk characterclass setting.*
Powers:
Spurious equivalence – once per day you can demonstrate the hierarchical violence of oppositions by using any thing as any other thing but only if the thing is sufficiently arbitrary.
Relative failure: “This shoe is equivalent to a key – I unlock the door and go free!”
Relative success: “Is it not you, locked by invisible bonds into your role as jailer, that is truly imprisoned? I do not have to wear these walls!”
Transcendental metasubject: “Since we are all perpetually and everywhere imprisoned, I find myself everywhere! For instance, on this street looking at the facade of your mere brick manifestation of a universal condition!”
Metanarrative Skepticism – “You think you are my enemy but really how can we know? These swords, they themselves hold the argument, sheathed as well as drawn. This jewelry, it cares not for its current place, it fits as well in my bag, look.”
* while avoiding the trap of mere ridicule into which Existential Comics so hedonically falls.
Tattered Remains of Tartary 
