Comment and Link Roundup: October 14, 2019

[brin_bellway]

Had to postpone last week's backups because my laptop had enough on its plate, so here is a somewhat larger roundup.


Comments on my own posts:

[none this time]

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Comments on other people's posts:

(Note: this post is subject to a formatting glitch. The last post is still last, but all *other* posts in the thread are in reversed order.) [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by icarian-arts) Today in "memes that came to people in visions": accidental tips on phone customisation.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by femmenietzsche) The social acceptability of the word "bitch".

[Dreamwidth; Wayback crawling forbidden OP apparently later turned crawlability on] (OP by yvannairie) The complicatedness of musical taste. [three comments]

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by yvannairie) Pokemon Go identity logistics.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by thisismycursed3rdblog; addressing itsmaledict (Halloween alt of itsbenedict)) Just how many twists can we put into enemies-to-friends-to-lovers?

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Links:

[FiveThirtyEight; Wayback] (by Ben Casselman; h/t Scott Alexander) As a 25-year-old part-time student in a certificate program at a school that prides itself on its *high* acceptance rate and who has never lived on-campus, I really feel this article.

[Tumblr; Wayback] (by doctorbeth) Adorable stuffed-animal clothing.

[mild cw: war] [Tumblr; Wayback] (by the-battle-lesbian; h/t consumptive-sphinx) Shaun Keenan does some excellent art of dinosaurs in (relatively) modern contexts.

[BBC News; Wayback] (can't find a byline; h/t Matt Levine) The best roundabouts in the United Kingdom.

[cw: abuse] [The Outline; Wayback] (by Joanna Mang; h/t Scott Alexander) I remember Shakesville, though I was never a regular reader: it was too intense for even 2011!me to handle. (And I say this as someone who was once among the top 5 most prolific commenters on Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.) I disagree with Scott's assessment, though: to the extent that Shakesville strikes me as less terrifying than it did before, it is only because I have since met people whose goodwill is not conditional on staying in the good graces of Shakesville's ilk.

[Raph's Website; Wayback] (by Raph Koster) A postmortem of the MMO Star Wars: Galaxies. I never played it and am not sure I've even heard of it before, but the series is interesting nonetheless.

(although why one would deliberately create a world in which everything decays I do not know; decay is the worst part of the real world and I for one would rather not have it in my escapism, especially not in such a...well, *inescapable* manner)

Laugh rule:
[Sputnikmusic; Wayback] (by SowingSeason)

traits not necessarily suitable for a band that regularly references animals and shouts hey! an average of nine time per song.

(I finally got around to listening to this 2015 album recently. Very solid album, only a couple of duds. (Whereas with My Head Is an Animal I only liked about the first half.) My favourite was "We Sink", because I am predictable and also it is pretty.)


Bonus: a few selections from my recent bookmark-tidying.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (by deird1) The Vegemite Effect. (A memory: "This food tastes of lies," I say, waving around a piece of food from the Chinese buffet when I'd been *told* we were going to a steakhouse.)

[Tumblr; Wayback] (by thatsnotwatyourmomsaid) Hello, you must have found my camera!

[WordPress; Wayback] (by Chris Witham) Welcoming new zombies to the collective.

[K.B. Owen Mysteries; Wayback] (by James Thurber) Viewing Macbeth through the lens of murder mysteries.

Laugh rule:
[Bandcamp; Wayback (while for *best* results you'll need the audio, Wayback *will* at least get you the lyrics)] (by Brooke Abbey) Let me tell you the story, as sad as it's true...

Comments

[contrarianarchon]

>>Raph actually links to a 1996 paper on the Four Types of MUD Players.

Richard Bartle (the author of that paper) is also the author of my early-2000s MMO design textbook - he was very prolific/influential in that Era of MMOs and MUDs.

(I am Explorer>Socialiser>Achiever and little to no killer. I think that paper underestimates the effect of other people on making a virtual world interesting to explore though - in general he seems stuck on moving through space as the vector for exploration)

>>[Long explanation about Flight Rising economic dynamics]

Thank you! I had gotten to "Boolean's very rare, must have much cash" from looking stuff up when you've mentioned them previously, but the specific trading scheme you have there was not something I was familiar with.

(Also let me say, that whole scheme is *really* cool and I think highly of you for being able to do something like that, even in a video game. Good job!)

[brin_bellway]

>>(Also let me say, that whole scheme is *really* cool and I think highly of you for being able to do something like that, even in a video game. Good job!)<<

<3

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Flight Rising has helped me a lot in discovering and nurturing my talents, and I'm very grateful for that.

As I said in an informal essay once (prompt: "my favourite game"):

I've heard claims that the original purpose of play, evolutionarily speaking, was as a way to practice skills one would need in one's adult life. By this measure, Flight Rising is--despite not specifically setting out to be educational--a very good game. Becoming an in-game merchant has made me better at real-world finances. A few months back I converted some currency (American Amazon store credit to Canadian cash) by buying a valuable, high-demand object for one currency and selling it for the other, a trick I first learned while navigating the dual-currency system on Flight Rising. I learned to make spreadsheets in order to keep better track of my inventory and profits, and later used them to create budgets and cost-benefit analyses for my family. I am now considering a career as an accountant, thanks in large part to Flight Rising giving me a chance to discover how much I enjoyed such financial analyses (and how I continued enjoying them after branching out to analyses of my family's real-world finances).