A paper I quite enjoy is “Queer Theory for Lichens” which argued that queer theory is genuinely a useful framework for studying lichens; Lichens resist categorisation in a manner that feels like they’re actively mocking our taxonomic efforts.

I keep meaning to switch to Voyager from Sync, but I’m lazy and bad with change

I think you may be lost. I have no objection to you being here (it’s not my place to gatekeep communities like this), but I have to wonder: surely there’s something else you could be doing that would make you happier?

I agree that baby steps are important. So many of the less techy people I know have become so accustomed to being annoyed at tech that they just suppress it, thinking that there is no alternative. I’ve been told a few times that my freely incandescent rage at technology is validating because “if even [I] are frustrated at things, then it’s not just a problem of [them] being bad at tech”.

Step one is acknowledging the problem

I’d be interested, if you wanted to pass on my username/direct me to who I’d message.

I can only assume you’re joking here, because what proof would possibly work for this context? Unless, of course, you’re fishing for the opportunity to be in a game that meets regularly, in which case, I respect the attempt

I get where you’re coming from, but I think the term does speak to a real phenomenon. For my part, I was such a high achiever in school that I was pretty alienated from my peers, and I responded to this isolation by doubling down on my academic pursuits.

I grew up in poverty, and I was the first in my family to go to university, so you can imagine how jazzed my folks were when I got into one of the best universities in the country. Back then, I genuinely believed that we live in a mostly meritocratic world, despite also being aware of many concrete ways in which the system fucks people over; I think I was just bullshitting myself, because the entirety of my self worth was invested in my academic achievements, and I desperately needed to believe I was striving for something meaningful, even if that was the selfish desire to have a more secure life than my parents had had.

The greatest benefit of going to such a prestigious university was that it thoroughly demolished any naive notions of meritocracy I might’ve held onto. Some of the most blindingly intelligent people I’ve ever known had their life path decided for them by socioeconomic pressures; you’re a much more competitive applicant for PhD programmes or postdoctoral fellowships you have a family who can financially support you as you study (I am convinced that this is an intended effect of unpaid internships).

I’ve found that even those that have been able to find work in their field have struggled after they’ve graduated. The problem is that even for people who aren’t interested in postgraduate research, the entire academic pathway promotes the kind of desperate tunnel vision that can only lead to burnout. We were told to “go to university, get a good degree, and you’ll be able to get a good job”, and that this was a viable strategy for people who were exceptional enough. Even if you don’t have overly strict parents, it can lead to a disproportionate amount of pressure, because we are made to believe that we can triumph over systemic injustice by just working harder.

I’m rambling a bit now, so I’ll just finish off by saying that this is a distinct phenomenon that’s real and potentially politically interesting. If nothing else, it can lead to conversations about how to prevent this kind of toxic mindset developing, and how to cope with burnout after putting all your eggs in one basket in this manner.

Have you ever DMed a game of DnD? It sounds like you have. In the games that I ran, there were definitely times where my party did something completely unexpected in a manner that’s thought out well enough that I feel I need to at least allow them to roll for success.

If they hadn’t done the work to make their plan work, then I think of it as the DC being so high that I don’t even let them roll for it (i.e. I imagine it as a DC 50 or something), but if they have made a plan that makes sense, letting them roll for it is the more fun option (even if the DC is still pretty high, like 20 or 25)

Sometimes a good plan and a high rolls can really throw my plans off, but given that I don’t give it to them easily, I really enjoy when my players do surprise me like this. DnD is ultimately a collaborative endeavour to tell cool stories, so if my players are giving me something interesting to use, who am I to ignore it? Especially as there’s usually opportunity to cause their success to present new and sometimes more difficult challenges to them. Do you not have any experiences like this?

Congrats on the growth.

As others have said, Fitgirl is a major player in the games piracy scene. She doesn’t crack the games, but she does repack cracked games (compresses them in clever ways). It’s quite common for people to impersonate her or her site to try to fool people into downloading malware. This seems to be another one of those.

She warns against this quite frequently. From her faq, for example:

"Q: Do you have a Facebook page? A: I didn’t, don’t and won’t have a Facebook page. The same applies to Twitter, Instagram, whatever else. This site is the only official FitGirl Repacks source. If you happen to come here from “Facebook FitGirl Page” – you’ve been fooled by an imposter. "

(Note: this comment is not an endorsement of games piracy, and this community is not the appropriate venue for discussions of that nature. Anyone interested should go to relevant communities like the ones hosted on the db0 Lemmy instance )

Oh my gosh, this is gorgeous. I’m not someone who is actively into art, so I tend to only discover artists that I like through serendipity like this. For that reason, thank you for this post.

We’ve not even had gay/goth Christmas yet! (Halloween that is. As a queer goth, I’m a big fan of it)

Didn’t an excel error cause Greece to adopt austerity measures in response to their debt crisis?

Oh my gosh, this is incredible. I’ve got far too many projects on the go at the moment, and I’m only a novice knitter, so I probably won’t get to this any time soon, but I am saving this post for future reference; I have a friend who would adore this as a gift.

What pattern did you use for the gloves? I’ve been debating doing a simple pair of hand warmers for myself, and that seems like it would be good practice.

What? That’s so silly.

Rulings like this annoy me. Like, if he had said “the spell is poorly written, because our intention is that a wall of force can be targeted by disintegrate, but you’re right that that’s not what the spell descriptions say”, then I’d be able to respect that a lot more than what you describe him saying.

Words are a slippery beast, and there will always be a gap between Rules as Intended and Rules as Written. Good game design can reduce that gap, but not if the designers aren’t willing to acknowledge the chasm they have created

This is a supremely silly thread and I am enjoying it greatly. Thanks for catalysing these cool discussions OP.

I don’t get it. Can you explain?

Edit (literally 10 seconds after submitting my comment): is the problem that a literal reading of this would suggest that even if more than one creature is caught in the cone, only one takes the damage?

On a tangenty note, this is one of the reasons I find board games and TTRPGs super fun: DnD 5e has a lot of these kinds of problems (which is why there’s so many sage advice clarifications), but even in more precisely written games, the interplay between Rules as Written (RAW) and Rules as Intended (RAI) is super interesting, because we have no direct way of accessing RAI. Even when the games designers chip in with clarifications, as with Sage Advice, all that does is give us more RAW to interpret. All we can do is guess at the RAI, which sometimes means actively ignoring the RAW.

It’s also cool to see how that tension manifests from the game design angle. I have a couple of friends who have either made board games, or written TTRPG books. Whether you’re the reader or the writer, the one constant is that words are slippery and unreliable, so there will always be a gap between RAW and RAI

Looks awesome, great work!

I’m curious about the straps — do they connect at the back similar to how it looks from the front? How do you don/doff the spaulders — is there a latch or other adjustment stuff we can’t see? How comfortable are the straps?

I ask because I have been considering making something similar, and I’m undecided at how to arrange things (it depends on what I decide to do for other armour pieces). I apologise if it seems like I’m interrogating you, I’m just an enthusiastic nerd

What is your favourite autumn soup?