zbikowski

I know you mentioned it, but I'm going to mention it anyway...

One notable exception to this is the person's work. Which I, personally, am not super inclined to talk about with people even though it comprises the vast majority of my knowledgebase. Maybe I'm projecting, but my guess is that Joe Schmoe isn't going to want to talk about his profession after coming home exhausted. That is, unless he's truly found his calling.

I agree that it's unfalsifiable - necessarily all discussions to do with interpretation of qualia are.

I think, however, that your reasoning is backwards. Language such as "picture this," "envision yourself on a beach," the concept of the "mind's eye," or especially the word "imagination" from "image" is much more likely to exist as a result of the actual process than to be its cause. Parsimony favors assuming that the description evolved from the experience - if nobody "saw" mental imagery, we would more readily describe the thought process as "thinking about," "reasoning around," that sort of thing.

The language used cannot be used as proof on its own. What makes me think this is more than a description problem is that reported vividness of imagery correlates to unconscious effects: pupils constrict to imagined bright shapes and dilate to imagined dark ones, scaled to how vivid the person says the image was[0]. People reporting aphantasia don't show those effects. Despite this not constituting "proof," I cannot rationalize it being a coincidence.

If it matters, I call myself aphantasic, though I cannot prove it to you. You may relate to my initial thought - "surely all this language is metaphor, and people don't really walk around hallucinating on command." Taking (the vast majority of) people at their word, however, indicates that they really do see things when they think about them - though visual mental imagery is meaningfully different from actually seeing (but is more like seeing than aphantasics assume). Refer to Galton's original 1880 study[1] for 150-year-old rationalizations that are the same as mine.

[0] https://elifesciences.org/articles/72484 [1] https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm

Thanks for the reply. The Benq definitely interests me. Maybe one day companies will be more incentivized to make "strange" aspect ratios like this.

Does anyone know what the roughly square-aspect monitor in the middle of his 3-monitor setup is? Looks interesting but I can't zoom in far enough to see a logo, and the Upgrading the Gaming PC[0] post. Thanks

[0] <https://nmsspot.com/2023/01/20/upgrading-the-gaming-pc/>

I couldn't reproduce this. I assume it's patched.

I'm not sure what authority you have on this subject, but anecdotally speaking as a non-software engineer who would lump himself with "most people," when it comes to white-collar work, I have noticed that all of my colleagues are, at the very least, expected to read email during time off (weekend or PTO) if not respond.

This applies to adjacent industries as well. I semi-regularly get email from firms (in the same time zone as mine) in the 11PM–2AM range.

Again, I'm not purporting to have any more experience than you do, but you can't assert that this is a tech-industry-only phenomenon when I am sure applicable examples other than my own could be found. I wish I could go without, but spending the first billable hour catching up on email is not really acceptable.

I agree, and it's certainly a good idea; OGL fears are still valid to this day. I think a much cleaner route, however, would be to abandon the chassis entirely. It protects one's long-term IP through unique game mechanics or by using an open system as a base.

A lot of how a game encourages play is based upon the small details that designers choose to include. In 1974, looking at OD&D for the first time, players probably wouldn't think to tap the floor for traps, but a 10' pole is curiously listed on the equipment table. Same with listening at doors, or things like that.

So instead of coming up with something entirely bespoke, companies seem to use D&D as a base not because it serves the game, but because it has lower "buy-in" for customers. Which I think is a shame.

This is true. Though I will say that modern iterations of Runequest and d6 (namely OpenD6 and its derivatives) resemble the original systems only barely. Same is true for T&T, which after its 5th Edition became likewise unrecognizable.

My point isn't necessarily that there shouldn't be modern versions of these games—obviously, D&D is the most popular TTRPG (at least in the US), and itself barely resembles the three brown booklets of '74. It's that by going back and discovering what made the originals so great, we can carry these lessons forward and make loving modern interpretations like Old School Essentials/Dolmenwood.

I appreciate all that Gavin Norman and Necrotic Gnome have done for the OSR TTRPG scene over the past few years, but I have to say each time I see a D&D-derivative system it makes me wish that other systems of the time—like Runequest, Tunnels & Trolls, or West End Games' d6 system beneath Ghostbusters (1985) and Star Wars (1987)—got even half the attention. Tom Moldvay and Dave Cook's Basic/Expert (1981) has been done to death at this point. For a nice historical lesson, look to Moldvay's later work on the Challenges Game System[0], which pares down the AD&D 1E Players Handbook (1978) into 8 pages suitable for running the game at the table.

I could rant for hours about the sacred cows of D&D deserving slaughter, but I'll refrain.

All this is to say, the Dolmenwood campaign book is great and I own it. It was originally a setting for Old-School Essentials published through a zine[1], and I think they could have stopped at just a campaign book, the one that the OP links to. I just don't think we need any more flavors of B/X!

[0] https://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=14165

[1] https://necroticgnome.com/blogs/news/the-end-of-wormskin

I agree that this would be fair, but it seemingly not true. "SEA" disallows "SEAL" on the next turn (correct answer ALES,) but then you are suddenly allowed to use "SEALED" later - because of my assumption of the rule, I didn't get this stage until the clue. Same with "LEASE" and "LEADERS," which are both allowed to use "LEA."

So it seems as though the rule is, you must mix up the letters for the following answer, but further answers are fair game to reuse letter combinations (or, it is applied arbitrarily.) Neither are very intuitive IMO.

People interested in jumping ship should consider a Google TV box (I have the onn. 4K from Walmart, I think I paid $40). In app-only mode (accessible deep in the settings,) there is only one advertisement on the homescreen, and it's quite responsive. Install apps such as Plex, Stremio, etc. without hassle. Programmable buttons on the remote, controls my Denon receiver just fine, very few complaints. Just my 2c.

* THIS IS NOT A PAID ADVERTISEMENT *

https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-css/ - book design adapted for web

https://practicaltypography.com/ - tons of practical advice on typefaces and text-based UX

https://harmful.cat-v.org/ - more of a "website-style" layout than the above two

It is so well-hidden, in fact, that there is no visual indicator that it exists at all, so you cannot be blamed for thinking it is gone. On the homepage (house icon) tap the Instagram logo and select "Following." It will present you with a chronological feed of posts from only those you follow.

Again, there is NO ARROW or any UI to indicate this is possible. You used to be able to set it as the default view, but that has been eradicated it seems.

I think that young USAmericans are deathly envious of a community like yours, myself included. I have nothing really novel to contribute here (in my view, North American urbanism, zoning regulation, the aforementioned globalism and, if you will allow me to briefly beat a dead horse, car-centric planning are to blame.)

I was playing Stardew Valley the other day and it hit me. For me, that type of close-knit community and simple living is merely fantasy, absolutely unattainable in real life.

I agree with your sentiment (Unicomp is a much more reliable company than other commenters seem to suggest Model F Labs to be...). That said, the Unicomp New Model M does not have N-key rollover, so I had to return mine back when. Unfortunate, because I really do like the buckling spring feel! (typed from Realforce R3S)

I like the game, but I would suggest giving the option to disable the tilted map. I have no idea what the practical purpose for this is - I find myself tilting my head while playing!

Edit: it would also be useful to be able to see the whole dungeon at once, legibly. Maybe a larger font size or something more readable? I find myself having to write down longer words to try and fill in the gaps.

I'm not really well-versed enough to provide a nuanced take on why one would choose TiddlyWiki over those three, although I think it has something to do with the fact that at the end of the day it's just HTML. OrgMode locks you into emacs, Obsidian (app) and Notion are proprietary. Makes sense there would be a big contingent of systems-oriented people who swear by it.

Anecdotally, one of my buddies uses it to host his homebrew TTRPG ruleset, which the wiki structure actually works very well for. I just download the HTML file and then I can reference it without internet, which is quite nice.

Can't watch the video at the moment, so here's a fun tidbit about everyone's favorite propaganda piece, Top Gun: 94,878 people enlisted in the Navy in fiscal year 1985/86 compared to 87,593 the previous year (~8.3%). Enlistment then fell 2.1% the next year[0]. The Navy's general advertising budget nearly doubled in this time, so it's hard to attribute it to the movie, but I can't help but think it had some effect. It certainly made me think flying fighter jets was the coolest thing ever when I was a kid.

[0] https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/maverick-top-gun-stat-turns...

I always imagined this to have evolved from a long history of humans getting sick around rotting corpses. The logical move is to stay away from them, and thinking they're freaky-looking is a good driver for that. Though the idea of neandertals eliciting a similar reaction has always been interesting to me.

I think that the interior structure doesn't necessarily matter—the problem here is that we don't know what consciousness is, or how it interacts with the physical body. We understand decently well how the brain itself works, which suggests that consciousness is some other layer or abstraction beyond the mechanism.

That said, I think that LLMs are not conscious and are more like p-zombies. It can be argued that an LLM has no qualia and is thus not conscious, due to having no interaction with an outside world or anything "real" other than user input (mainly text). Another reason driving my opinion is because it is impossible to explain "what it is like" to be an LLM. See Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"

I do agree with the parent comment's pushback on any sort of certainty in this regard—with existing frameworks, it is not possible to prove anything is conscious other than oneself. The p-zombie will, obviously, always argue that it is a truly conscious being.

Last phase of the desktop wars? by Eric Raymond: https://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8764

You may be unpleasantly surprised. I have TWSBI Eco-T pens in both <M> and <F>, which write similarly to some Japanese <B> and <M> nibs respectively. I would recommend, if you want something with true portion control, to get a Pilot Prera in <F> or a Kakuno in <EF> (or any pen with a Japanese nib), just to check it out. Both are fairly affordable.

Also, given you’re a lefty, you may want to avoid “good paper” for fountain pens. Coatings on the paper that allow inks to “sit on top” of the page while they dry, preventing feathering and allowing the ink’s properties to develop, understandably slow the drying process. In addition, avoid Noodler’s inks. They look beautiful but dry at an absolutely glacial pace—in my experience, up to several days’ time to fully dry (unassisted, in a dry environment) on Midori MD notebook paper.

Thanks very much for sharing this - despite his declaration of his majority audience, this is excellent, hard-hitting advice for anyone who feels lost in the gap between their achievements and their "potential."