precisioncoder

The wonderful thing about Dnd, especially old dnd was that fun superceded the rules. If you are fighting goblins and it's boring, then that's the groups fault for not making it exciting in some way.

(The goblins realize they're going to lose and start fleeing, they ambush in an interesting way, they are a distraction for something else, one of them has a bomb, the party has to fight them in their underwear using camping gear as weapons, etc etc etc)

or you do something else to preserve the fun such as simplifying the encounter

(You easily crush the puny goblins while only losing (1d6 health), After seeing the might of the wizards powerful spell the goblins start bowing down before him, you quickly make a game to see who can knock a goblin the farthest and the rest run off, etc etc etc)

The thing that I love like crazy about dnd is that you don't have to do anything that you don't wish to. Anything that is boring, annoying, frustrating, etc can be easily discussed in the group and house ruled away. The only limits and annoyances are the ones that you have chosen to allow to continue.

That's true, and also unfair, however if believe if we are supportive rather than dismissive or aggressive towards these experiments regardless of who they come from then we can create a culture of encouraging people to try things. Many people may read his article and be inspired to try their own experiments, and even if they're low level they will increase empathy and consideration for blind people. We can't go from ignorant to perfect in a day, I believe we need to create a culture that leads in the direction that we want to go.

It's always better to start your experiments at a low intensity in a controlled environment before ramping them up. As we've seen with the bird box challenge, a ton of people have been injured for attempting to live ordinary days with blindfolds on. Also the isolation and sensory deprivation aspects are actually more intense with reduced activity.

Each person has different limits and each experience outside of your comfort zone pushes their own personal limits further. I think it's good that people want to learn about what their limits are as well as challenging those limits.

I live in Austria but I travel and have trained through most of Europe where it's similar. The international people that I've met have said it's similar in the US but I can't speak personally about it. I've been doing it for about four years did a teaching program last year and teach weekly classes now.

Yes I would say about 80% of most of the groups I've attended has been either singles or people coming without their partners. For a first workshop it often tends to be more couples but the social aspect of it naturally encourages mixing groups, especially because to do it safely you'll need one or two "spotters" that help keep you safe.

I would highly recommend dropping the dating sites and spending the time and money looking into touch centric hobbies instead. There are dozens of different styles of dance, Acroyoga or Partner acrobatics is also a great option. Whether you meet a partner or not, having a better relationship with the opposite gender and touch will make your dating options much better. Often you don't find your special somebody until you stop needing to find them, because that's when you can be truly open to what the world has to offer you.

"deserve no quarter in civilized discourse." This is a dangerous opinion. I would argue that the entire point of civilized discourse is to provide quarter for even opinions you radically disagree with, after all people hold these opinions and isn't discussing them in a civilized manner rather than dismissing and villainizing the people who hold them the only way to progress? Otherwise you have two sides that aren't discussing anything with each other and resort to violence, legal challenges, and pressure on employers rather than attempting to connect with each other and share another view.

The news article you link to is interesting because it contains one inflamatory remark while omitting any context or full text of the email. While I probably strongly disagree with him as well as well as what he wrote in his email the tactics used: Taking the most distasteful sentence (or part of a sentence) they can find and concealing anything else, has been used time and time again in many contexts in order to generate outrage without thought or understanding. This is what I find disgusting about modern news, it's more an outrage generator using incomplete out of context quotes than increasing information about the world.

Yes! That's a great example of words that have different meaning conveying a similar context. ("Viel Erfolg" meaning more like "Lots of success."/"I wish you success"). Even that though I feel has a bit of different subtext. Honestly that's the hardest thing about learning another language. Even after 10 years here I often say something which in meaning is exactly correct but still fails to convey what I wish due to some cultural subtext that I wasn't aware of.

After living abroad for 10 years I think one of the biggest things I've learned is that translations don't quite work. The problem is the context and emotional framework in relation to the words.

For example "Viel Glück" can translate to "Good Luck" but what exactly is meant from this and how someone feels about me wishing it to them is quite different from Canada where I grew up.

At home it's a polite and kind of nice way to wish someone luck in what they're doing. Here it's often seen as a little sarcastic or teasing as there's a tiny culture implication that it means they didn't prepare enough.

There are massive amounts of this context or slight shading around the words which can completely change the contextural meaning of an exchange without changing anything about the literal translation.

Also, as to schadenfreude I really don't think German people identify with the idea of taking pleasure from another's misfortune. In fact most of the German speakers that I know would feel quite hurt or offended by the insinuation that they take pleasure from other's misfortune. It's more an acknowledgement that it happens, and a way to bring it into the conversation than something anyone would be proud of or want to do. Interestingly enough it's one of the most common borrowed words in English from German and is helpful to describe many situations. (Edit spelling)

It's worth fixing that, surgery has come a long way. I had it surgically corrected last year and the energy boost from better breathing while physically active, better sleeping, and the lack of annoying people with my snoring are well worth it.

As an employee I found a nice hack around that. The employer made an offer and I made a counter offer, the employer said he couldn't meet it and I explicitly told him it was negotiable. He thought about it for a couple days and found a way to hack his system to give me more and I got something around the middle of our offers. We both ended up happy in the end, I'm still there.

It could be either depends a lot on the context that led to the altercation.

"Voluntary manslaughter Sometimes called a crime of passion murder, is any intentional killing that involves no prior intent to kill, and which was committed under such circumstances that would "cause a reasonable person to become emotionally or mentally disturbed". Both this and second-degree murder are committed on the spot under a spur-of-the-moment choice, but the two differ in the magnitude of the circumstances surrounding the crime. For example, a bar fight that results in death would ordinarily constitute second-degree murder. If that same bar fight stemmed from a discovery of infidelity, however, it may be mitigated to voluntary manslaughter."

From the sounds of this it wasn't actually murder, it was manslaughter. Murder requires being premeditated where this sounds like it was heat of the moment.

Personally I think we should either rehibilitate and then forget in order to give them a chance to contribute to society, or keep them in prison. The idea of releasing people but then villifying them will basically just channel them back into the criminal system again. Studies have shown the best way to prevent crime is with reintegrating them socially. The biggest risk factors are:

"prior criminal history, lifestyle instability (unemployment, frequent moves), and negative peer associations"

The right to be forgotten would reduce two out of three of those risks.

https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/smrsk-fctrs...

We do sort but it can be hard to know the order, if you ask whether they eat their favorite food first or last it can give you a valuable clue as to how they sort

Thank you for this, I've been doing this since I was a child, it often ends up being taken badly and I have a lot of trouble with it. I'm still struggling decades later to rein in this habit.

I actually find it a relief to know this is a common trait in programmers and may have it's alternate side of making me better at my craft.

When you grow up in a buddhist family it's more like something that's always there. My parents were heavy meditators (1 hour+/day) so I would often just hang out with them. They probably half taught me a few dozen times when I was young, it's a culture thing. Kinda like growing up a Christian household I'm sure you accumulate random knowledge about the bible, god and jesus. When I was older I went through some more official training but it was purely an interest thing, they let me pick my own path. These days I meditate but I do it in a purely secular non religious way.

Something I'm surprised hasn't come up yet is the ability to flex... "something" in your brain and turn hallucinations on and off.

I grew up in a Buddhist family and was meditating since an early age. I'm not sure if this was related at all but since I was young I could look at things when I was bored and do something in my brain that would cause the patterns to move. If I then needed to concentrate I could focus and it would go away.

I did some research and found out that there is a common effect with meditators that they can meditate while on drugs in order to mitigate or in some cases even deactivate some of the effects. So if you want to experiment it might be good to learn a bit so you have an extra tool to work with your mind while you're altering it.

YMMV of course.

Logic doesn't matter, it's the ability to sell it. This goes for almost all major decisions which are usually decided based on emotional "gut feelings" rather than logic and statistics.

I would suggest something like: "I've been crunching the numbers on how to increase efficiency and been pleasantly surprised at how well we're performing compared to our competition. I was thinking of trying an experiment based on this new study I've read <Link> where we leverage existing great management techniques to also allow remote work on a limited basis. If you're interested I could show you the numbers but I think with a small sample set <me and a few other good developers> we could prove that this could boost our efficiency even higher! In fact even though it's increasing our numbers we can even offer it to the team as a perk, <study> has shown that when a team gets a perk even if it boosts efficency they work even harder! We have this great new/old project <X> that would be perfect to measure the numbers with. How about I roll it out at the beginning of next month? Don't worry about the planning, I have some experience and can have a proposal on your desk by the end of the week."

Doesn't the code still technically belong to you? Can't you submit a takedown request?

Interestingly enough if a large amount of people replied to fishing emails they would become unprofitable as most of those people would not be tricked into sending them money. If anyone felt like a charity project a chatbot that contacted spam senders could put a lot of these scam operations out of business...

The thing that shocked me is it isn't just the best. Even the worst usually have massive amounts of time and effort invested and the pay is normally awful. It's the hobby effect, similar to art and music, however the top performers make vastly less. Cirque du Soleil performers who are some of the best in the world still mostly make < 100k/year.

Do you have any idea how hard it can be to get a job in any decent circus? Most of them require decades of training and education and pay less than most manual labour jobs. Honestly working as a software developer (which I do) required far less investment of time and money then circus. (Where I am now a Partner Acrobatics trainer)

Uh, maybe in some places in Canada? I grew up in Nova Scotia and seeing a doctor with an appointment was possible within a week, emergency was always possible right away. (Had 34 stitches by the time I was 17 due to growing up on a farm so I had a lot of experience.)

Here in Austria it's even easier, I can go directly to my family doctor at any time and wait ~hour with no appointment necessary. Xrays, or other things are usually possible same day and even elective surgery that improves quality of life is free and is plannable within a couple months with the recovery time as paid leave from work.

It is being worked on in many european cities. Berlin for instance has a public housing buyback plan in place and many European cities are looking at or have already placed rules in place making foreign ownership or running of massive rental companies more expensive or difficult. Generally commodification of essential needs such as housing and food does need some regulation in order to prevent victimization of the poorest citizens.

True enough, however through my mistakes we have established that all self righteous theorizing should take into account that the data is pre-smartphone ;)

Thanks for the heads up, I went back and edited my comment.

Good catch... I wasn't reading thoroughly enough...

I went back and looked at the data in the study to see whether it used the preliminary research or only for successfully recruited candidates and discovered this:

"Cohorts born before 1962 were subject to a different scoring norm, and cohorts born later than 1991 faced a radically different conscription process with less than 50% invited for in-person testing after completing a web-administered survey. As a result, representative data are not available for later birth cohorts. Data for immigrants are excluded as information on full family size and exact birth order is of lesser quality, while selection into scoring is markedly different as immigrants typically do not face mandatory conscription testing but need to self-select into conscription."

So it seems the preliminary examination does not include enough information or the conscription in general has changed to radically for that information to be reliable.

See my comment above, the data in the Norwegian study is VERY suspect

Very interesting.

I started thinking about possible other reason's this could occur and checked into the data about the Norwegian study. The data was all from mandatory conscription so it couldn't be tainted could it?

Guess again.

At the same time that IQ started dropping Norway changed their conscription policy...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Armed_Forces

"In practice recruits are not forced to serve, instead only those who are motivated are selected.[14] In earlier times, up until at least the early 2000s, all men aged 19–44 were subject to mandatory service, with good reasons required to avoid becoming drafted."

Hmmmm so IQ in the tested cohort started dropping when it was only tested in people who chose to take part in Military service rather than all 17-18 year old males?

That seems like it could have another explanation...

EDIT:

So it seems I missed some info ->

I went back and looked at the data in the study to see whether it used the preliminary research or only for successfully recruited candidates and discovered this:

"Cohorts born before 1962 were subject to a different scoring norm, and cohorts born later than 1991 faced a radically different conscription process with less than 50% invited for in-person testing after completing a web-administered survey. As a result, representative data are not available for later birth cohorts. Data for immigrants are excluded as information on full family size and exact birth order is of lesser quality, while selection into scoring is markedly different as immigrants typically do not face mandatory conscription testing but need to self-select into conscription."

So it seems the preliminary examination does not include enough information or the conscription in general has changed to radically for that information to be reliable.

After more investigation it seems that basically they're saying that from 1980 - 1993 IQ rose, then fell again from 1993-2007 reaching roughly the same levels as previously.

All data after that is tainted as too much has changed in the data source (conscription).

However one very important point about this is that all data is pre-smartphone.