Bozicus

Thanks for the tip, I’ll check it out! The issue isn’t my local instance, though, it’s that clearly marked safe spaces always attract people who want to make those spaces unsafe. It’s kind of a “Trolls? Must be Wednesday” kind of thing for me, after a lot of years online, but it never stops hurting. The only thing downvoting does to trolls is allow non-trolls to communicate to one another that the space is still supposed to be safe, which offers a little comfort, but it doesn’t actually make the space safe. Banning the trolls is much more effective.

Ah got it. There was no need for you to mention the masculine perspective in your post, lol, I hesitated to even add it to a conversation that was about men doing the wrong thing. Just because someone is in pain doesn’t mean it’s okay for them to behave badly. But I decided the topic of “men sucking due to emotional trauma” might be relevant to a discussion of men sucking in general, so I brought it up. And yeah, obviously it’s not women’s fault, that’s yet another example of guys doing exactly the wrong thing about their feelings. [/sigh] Toxic masculinity is all about sabotaging your own opportunities for emotional connection and growth.

About the image, agreed, I don’t think there’s much room for direct parallels there. It’s reductive in both directions to say that problematic images of men and women are fundamentally the same, or even that they’re problematic in the same way. The power fantasy angle is a good take. I suppose there is a lot of wish fulfillment in superhero movies, especially for guys who grew up identifying with those superheroes. I find I usually see my flaws in male Marvel characters rather than anything I would like to be, but I suppose that’s part of the same picture. Male gaze vs female gaze might just be too difficult a concept for guys who are just starting to be able to analyze subtext. They might never have seen an example of a movie or TV show featuring the female gaze, which I think is important for understanding what it means.

All of which makes me even more disappointed, since it sounds like this was a situation in which women were coming in with useful and interesting contributions, and getting yelled at for, essentially, being right.

Very thorough! I like your framework of needing to provide an incentive to join the pirates rather than the navy. That’s exactly the kind of organizing principle I find useful with world building.

Fresh vegetables have vitamin C, too, so you could give them credit for that. If the actual party gets scurvy, and you want to make it a plot point, I recommend you make their most recent battle wounds reopen. That’s a real potential symptom of scurvy, and is likely to confuse them. Technically, it wouldn’t be the first symptom, iirc, but it’s easy to communicate in the context of a campaign, and scarier than bleeding gums, though I think the root cause is the same. (Something about connective tissue breaking down).

I mean, depending how vicious you want to be, lol, I am the kind of person who weaponizes realism in fiction or games. I think a little unexpected horror helps people focus on the story.

That makes sense. I think Bud Light had a broader problem than Target, but I agree that their retreat wasn’t a good idea, either.

I agree that a lot of information can be inferred from vote history, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry if I came across as trying to minimize the risk there.

What I meant is that exponentially more information of the type you describe can be inferred from post history, particularly for those of us who use this space to connect with other members of marginalized groups we belong to. Voting history is a minor risk to me when just the fact that I have replied with “I have also had this experience” to a certain post or posted a meme in a certain group could cause serious trouble for me in my offline life. I don’t understand the use case where someone would become concerned about privacy because they found out their vote history could be accessed by unknown parties if they weren’t already concerned about privacy because their posts and comments are visible to anyone and everyone.

I guess the tl;dr is that I just don’t understand how the hyper focus on the risks associated with voting history is consistent with an assessment of personal risk in a broader sense. I am conscious of taking a huge risk by being on the fediverse, and I decided it was worth it. The stakes were high enough to begin with that I just assumed that the only source of privacy I had would come from anonymity, not the technology, which might be why I am confused by some of the responses I am seeing.

I agree with you about harassment issues, and the importance of controlling the transfer of admin-level data between instances, but for your last scenario, doesn’t blocking only apply to users who are logged in? Assuming your hypothetical tankies and Nazis were actually posting as well as blocking, it would be easy to find them just by logging out, and there are a lot of ways to get them banned or otherwise counteract their activities that don’t require someone to interact directly with them while logged in. The case you’re describing is not the kind of situation where the most important action is to argue with them. Arguing with extremists usually just validates their delusions, and encourages them to keep doing what they’re doing.

How do pirate captains manage the health of their crew, particularly in the areas of nutrition and disease?

On a more granular level:

1. What are the staple, easily-stored foods, and how are they supplemented with fresh foods?

[Are we talking ship’s biscuit and salt beef with regular landfalls to get fruit and vegetables? Is there magical cold storage so they can have frozen whatever? Do they take vitamin supplements? Do none of these things happen, so long voyages always result in nutritional deficiencies, including scurvy?]

2. What level of medical knowledge and expertise are available in your world in general, and on ships in particular?

[Are they even at the level where they know and acknowledge that scurvy is caused by poor diet? Is healing all magic and four-humors pseudo-medicine? Is it difficult to get a competent physician to join a pirate crew, leading to bullet wounds being treated by barbers or dentists?]

3. How do pirate captains deal with contagious diseases, and what are the most common shipboard epidemics?

[Is quarantine a thing? …in a confined space? Do they have the germ theory of disease at all, or is the focus on “bad air” and ventilation, or demons, or divine disfavor…? Are they looking at flu, plague, body lice, intestinal parasites, syphilis, all of the above…? Do crew members generally comply with the orders of the captain and/or surgeon, or are you likely to have half the crew sick, and the other half mutinying?]

4. How are battle wounds dealt with?

[Related to 2, but you’ll want specific protocols for different kinds of injuries, removal of bullets, shrapnel, or arrows as relevant, suturing techniques or lack thereof, bandage material, disinfectant or lack thereof, pain management—other than liquor—if any, ways of dealing with infection, if you want to go there, and, of course, prosthetics, because, IMO, you can’t have a pirate setting without the option of peg legs and hook hands, and anything else bad you think might happen to characters in battle].

5. How much value do captains place on keeping a crew alive, vs just replacing crew members when they die from injuries or disease?

[Fun fact: the British navy—and other Western navies—used to deliberately overcrowd ships at the start of the voyage because they knew a large portion of the crew would die, and they wanted to retain enough sailors to make it home. Quite possibly the death rate would have been lower without the initial overcrowding, and it definitely would have been lower if they had invested in medical care rather than extra recruits. I suspect pirates were, historically, as bad or worse in this respect. The extent to which captains in your world see crew members as replaceable vs repairable will be demonstrated by your answers to the preceding questions, or, if you’d rather go the other way, might help you decide on the answers].

…all of which probably makes it sound like I hate maritime dramas, which is totally false, lol, I love them, I just have a really morbid imagination.

Actually, I could see that tasting pretty good, if it was served cold. Add tomato juice and vodka, and it would be like a fizzy Bloody Mary.

I’m too new to the fediverse to form an opinion about community differences in general, but I have definitely noticed that my own behavior is different without the downvote option. The biggest difference for me is that I am more likely to do things that decrease my interaction with content that upsets me, rather than reading hateful garbage just to get the dubious satisfaction of pushing the little down arrow button. The stuff I downvoted wasn’t usually something I could have discussed in a civil way, it was trolling, bigotry, or generally hateful comments. (I am part of frequently-targeted groups, and no platform is free of bigots and trolls). Now, when I see that kind of thing, I do what I should have been doing all along, which is some combination of blocking, reporting, and just skipping over things I recognize as not worth my time. I think you’re right that the voting system can replace moderation in unhelpful ways. Trolls should be removed, not just downvoted in situ.

…well played, lol. Although now I’m imagining liquid smoke flavor in a cold beverage, and I feel extremely conflicted about it.

As a non-tech-savvy person, the confusion is real, lol. I am okay with just not really knowing what’s going on, and with asking questions or RTFM when I can find it, but that still puts me in the category of “comfortable in a highly technical environment.” People who are genuinely uncomfortable with technology and tech people are going to get a lot of culture shock.

To be fair, I think it goes both ways. People who answer a question from the point of view of a software developer will, quite reasonably, feel hurt if they’re told their answer isn’t helpful. I think it might be good to have a dedicated “landing pad” community for helping new people get oriented, rather than leaving them to ask the nearest person, who might or might not be the best person to ask.

What, no product placement, even? But how will I know what kind of flavored seltzer will make me pretty if I don’t see what Barbie drinks?!