clyde

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Posts posted by clyde

  1. Posted

    FBR has entered heavy rotation in my personal play-time. I haven't played Plunkbat, only watched. FBR is fun for a few gamesd til I finish in the top 10, then I'm done for the day.

  5. Posted

    38 minutes ago, YoThatLimp said:

    I'd like to recommend a nice Chef's knife - my In-Laws got me one for my birthday and holy cow, it makes a difference. 

     

    You can get a great knife for pretty cheap ($40), it will last you ages and make general cutting/chopping a breeze.

     

    https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Fibrox-45520-Frustration-Packaging/dp/B008M5U1C2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1506089054&sr=8-3&keywords=victorinox+knife

     

     

     

    Do you sharpen your knives? Seems like learning to use a whetstone might be a better investment.

  6. Posted

    Here is something I'm interested in learning more about the socialism perspective of.

    So for the sake of argument let's assume that powerful labor-unions are an impossibility in the United States due to automation for instance. So at this point in our hypothetical situation you have a group of corporate conglomerates (megacorps) that have mixtures of competing and shared interests mediated by the state which all of the megacorps have established stakes in. At this point, some public poilicies that benefit the population might benefit one megacorp while hurting another. For instance having a single-payer healthcare system is more likely to benefit the Walmart megacorp because that would largely externalize healthcare costs for their labor and provide more consumers with disposable income, but the Anthem megacorp would lose its ability to monopolize the healthcare market as a seller now that there is a larger buyer for the medical industry. 

    In the socialist perspective, is it possible to boost Walmart's influence on this particular issue in some way to basically create a temporary coalition between Walmart and public interests? If there is an effective way to boost the influence of particular megacorps as they war with each other over profits, could it be more effective than trying to organize labor which has no power in our hypothetical situation of full automation?

  7. Posted

    I was thinking about this again this morning @Siromatic. I made a game last year that was supposed to be historical magical-realism set in the Byzantine Empire circa 1330. The narrative didn't really work well and I realized that it was because players hadn't spent a few weeks watching YouTube videos and reading Wikipedia articles about the monks on Mount Athos and the hesychast controversy. So my narrative defaulted to a very base travel story with no significant development and stilted dialogue. I basically made a history fan-game that was completely dependent in the player already having enjoyed the source material.

    So I was thinking about the synchronous floor model and wondering if it would be able to fix that disconnect and I think it would. Just by having a series of narratives in that world taking place synchronically, my narrative of intrigue could be discovered in a similar way to how I enjoyed coming up with the speculative conspiracy theory I developed while researching for it. Now I want to re-visit that project and see what might be able to do with this format.

  8. Posted

    @Siromatic If the appeal of these synchronous scenes is mostly observational, then there are a couple of performances you may be interested in knowing about. The Order dvd of Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3 is a novel thing. Users can basically switch between cameras as dude climbs the the inside of the Guggenheim. It's been a long time since I've played with it, but I'm pretty sure that the performances on various floors keep time with each other while you flip around. 

    Another comparison would be the Cirque du Soleil performances in VR. They don't switch between cameras, but there is a modularity to the performances that surround you and your gaze is limited so you can never see it all. 

    I know these are not really what you are talking about, but I think they can provide us with some observations relevant to your hypothetical game. One thing you seem to be focused on is the idea of making sure the player can see enough in a playthrough to feel satisfied by the narrative. You also seem to want there to be a strongly authored main through-line. The novelty of The Order and the Cirque du Soleil performances for me is a certain humility I feel as the audience; I feel decentered by a persistence that occurs without my gaze. I think this is the main strength of this type of performance. In order to move towards audience satisfaction, I would recommend filling each "floor" with something sublime in itself that also can be unified with the eventual juxtapositions which are likely to occur in order to give the piece a more general sensibility. The resulting rhetoric can still be affecting even if the juxtaposed pieces can't be fully attributed to a strongly authored narrative (though a strongly authored narrative is still relatively possible).

  9. Posted

    I am pretty sure I'm on a U.S. server.

    To be honest I'm not sure that I want to play this game with anyone. I don't enjoy the combat, loot, crafting, or merchantilism at all. I'm just moving through quests and finding out that everyone in town has a peculiar story.

     

    I don't know anything about mmo's though. I hear people talk about going on raids but I have no idea what would be fun about raiding. I'm open to trying something out, but I'm not willing to put much effort in or committing to much.

  10. Posted

    7 minutes ago, Jutranjo said:

    I ended up buying this for 10 euro on steam, anyone still playing?

     

    I bought it and I'm enjoying it. I'm not an mmo player so the other players killing my targets is actually a bit distracting as I explore the world (through the quest-chain) and check out these visual-novel esque short-stories.

    I'm a Khajit Nightblade in the Dominion.

  11. Posted

    @itsamoose  I think the idea is basically that capital accumulation has created a situation in which the two political parties in power (in the U.S.) both side far more with the interests of capitalists than with labor. So their plan is to find ways to give labor more influence. The DSA seems to actively avoid any details of what a socialist system will look like while aiming for one. The reasoning for this is that to come up with a socialist design for a system would lessen the power that those who inhabit that system would have to design the socialist system once it comes. I can understand why that will be an unsatisfactory answer for many, but I kinda like the idea. Capitalist interests have slowly created a circumstance where labor doesn't have the ability to organize and influence the public sphere. At this point, we can see where capitalists interests tend towards in U.S. politics (and I don't think it is a good direction). So I think increasing the influence of labor, learning about a socialist perspective on things like race, gender, and class, and promoting more active citizenship has some hope to it.

  12. Posted

    4 minutes ago, YoThatLimp said:

     

    It was good playing with you again @clyde ! I see why people dig this game, I wish the DLC operators were maybe a bit more attainable via regular currency hah.

     

    I had a blast playing with you yesterday. After you talked positively about the shotgun I saw there was a shotgun-challenge available and I played with it last night. I like using Smoke with it now because I tend to push back a little bit when time is running out and I can throw smoke and then shoot in that general direction a few times.

    Which operators do you have? I know you rock Sledge a lot. I've probably asked you that before but I don't remember. In a way I envy the limitation of having a small roster to get familar with, but I do like the novelty of getting to choose a particular operator based off of what killed me two rounds earlier.

     

  13. Posted

    34 minutes ago, electricblue said:

     

    I think realizing that no policy is perfect and there will always be winners and losers will set your expectations at an appropriate level. There's a wide difference between believing a policy like single payer or all-payer rate setting will be the best thing for the country despite its drawbacks and believing that your panacea would fix everything if only the powerful would listen. Having a humble attitude about how your pet agenda will work with real people is not the same thing as 'having no conviction' it's being realistic about how much change you can (and should) affect on other people's lives.

     

    I feel you and I appreciate you putting this sentiment into words. It helps explain how I can be excited about becoming a member of the Democratic Socialists of America without feeling confident that I understand what "Socialism" is. I like the policies the DSA supports and the ways that they support them.

  14. Posted

    1 hour ago, electricblue said:

    Avoid rigorous ideologues if you want to maintain your sanity.

     

    I will say that I've tried this and it stopped working for me. That is if you define "rigorous" as organizing behind any named ideology besides centralism

    .

  16. Posted

    1 hour ago, SgtWhistlebotom said:

     

    i like the Discourse Collective podcast because they do shows by themes, tackling leftist theory, news, and then analyzing culture. are there any topics that you're specifically interested in @clyde ?

     

    I'll check it out.
    I'm watching Mine Wars right now, I'm about half-way through.

     

     

     

    When They talk about the economics of the company town (housing for workers, company stores that take the company's currency, that type of set-up) it sounds like a good idea to me in a way, but I can also see how it creates a reliance on the company and how the companies then began to not only take away rights, but took away Constitutional Rights. And when they talk about how the mine owners were all trying to under-sell each other and how that created a low profit-margin, it sounds like an argument that continues to have a lot of relevance today (immigrant labor and foreign factories). I'd say what I'm most interested in right now regarding theory is something that can supply me with the imaginative capacity see those two arguments and not default to Capitalist Realism.

    I'd also like to find more sources talking about the supposed economic war in Venezuela. I've seen three things on the internet that claim the manufacturers for specific items such as toilet-paper, corn-flour, and cooking oil are intentionally sabotaging either production or distribution in order to put more public pressure on the leftist government. But it all seems to come from Telesur and it doesn't compute for me; why can't the government apply state-capitalism to start a factory for corn-flour and cooking oil?

     

  17. Posted

    6 hours ago, Badfinger said:

    Might I suggest Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto.

     

    I don't have anything remotely close to the attention-span required for reading Das Kapital. Every once in a while I look for YouTube videos that are good explainers for things like the "Theory of Value" or ... I don't know other Marxist concepts I could look up ("Capital accumulation"?). I'm interested but I prefer more digestable summaries to listen to while I play Trackmania. If anyone comes across some please post them here.

  18. Posted

    I'm convinced that Chris would love pinball if he found a table with with a strong tie between an attractive theme and the modes, but I know we are all busy people with a limit to how many hobbies we can participate in.

    This is the table that made me understand pinball as an expressive interactive art-form that uses optimization, discovery, and dexteeity-challenges to create something greater (but totally reliant on) its parts.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who's_Tommy_Pinball_Wizard

  19. Posted

    So I'm still on this kick and digging deeper by just filling my social media feeds with socialism-oriented accounts and browsing like normal. I've come to learn that "socialism" is largely defined as a critique of (and development of an alternative to) "capitalism". This allows for a lot of wiggle room and wider involvement.

    The reason I'm posting at the moment though is that I just listened to the DSA's official podcast called "Rose Radio" and I found the first episode to be very helpful. It's possible that the helpfulness of tbis particular episode is completely reliant on the jist of what I've been vaccuuming up in the last month (or possibly years really). 

    http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:313105177/sounds.rss

     

    Also the got more t-shirts in the swag area of their website and the "feminist socialism" tshirt is totally my thang and I am not an XL. So I just bought a print subscription to Jacobin instead.

  20. Posted

    I'm looking forward to playing a lot of this next week when the new operators come out (Sept 5th): 

    http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/848703/Rainbow-Six-Siege-operators-update-Blood-Orchid-release-date

     

    Based off this description, they don't sound nearly as interesting as Jackal or Mira, but I love traps and I have a hard time effectively using sensory-deprevation devices so I'm looking forward to trying these new G.I.Joe toys out. I'm glad I have a season-pass; I look forward to new operators rather than dreading them. Based off the descriptions I probably wouldn't unlock any three of these characters if I had to grind for them.

     

  21. Posted

    I've heard that "block-chains" and "crytocurrency" are gonna be big from internet tech-evangelists for a while. This is the first article I've read where the market-value of those technologies aren't based solely on currency-speculation so I find it interesting. This makes sense, I could see how companies that require CPU and GPU power might start their own cryptocurrencies rather than pay Amazon (if it is cheaper).

    https://www.roadtovr.com/otoy-render-token-rndr-light-field-vr-ar/amp/

  24. Posted

    Quote

    Chief among the factors drawing new members to the DSA is the ecosystem of collective DIY activism, from mass marches on the national level to small local committees and chapter-specific working groups focused on mobilizing action on issues such as anti-racism and feminism.

    Whereas the Tea Party was a GOP movement masquerading as populism, one intended to gum up the works of the Obama administration, the new breed of lefties joining the DSA wants to fight the worst excesses of the Trump agenda while also raging against the Democratic Party machine. They view the Democrats as stuck in passive #Resistance mode, a weak-kneed party trading Russian conspiracy theories while failing to offer a compelling alternative vision to the hellish Trumpian present.

     

    https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/socialism-democratic-socialists-of-america-convention-millennials-carlos-ramirez-rosa/Content?oid=29358708