andrewrgross

joined 2 years ago
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[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

China would be an unstoppable juggernaut.

...Isn't it?

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It looks like a lot of people in this comment section didn't read the article. Because I expected something far more dystopian, and honestly this is not that big a deal. Maintaining your confidence and avoiding distractions during a job search is actually a real challenge, and if they offer lunch and WiFi, then spending a few dollars a day to get dressed and leave your apartment sounds like a totally reasonable service.

I think it sounds a little fucked up, but just in the way that most work stuff is fucked up today. I wish multi-purpose short term space rentals in the US were this cheap.

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 6 points 3 weeks ago

I read this and thought "This would be an incredible training simulation for union organizing".

I'm guessing it's just a fun gimmick to blow off steam. But overall, I approve. I genuinely think more people should role play standing up for themselves to practice the skills.

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 weeks ago

Did you read the article? They're sold as a productive workspace for job seekers.

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 28 points 3 weeks ago

Respectfully, this title gets under my skin.

Why so doomer? He might veto it. It wouldn't be surprising. But why are you declaring a loss prematurely?

Don't hope for things there's no chance of. Fight to change the chances of things, and if you fail try and fight again and again until you win.

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 38 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

This headline reads like 2025 news Mad-Libs:

"[Proper noun] is using [Latest fad] to [Verb] [Ideological alignment adjective] [Conceptual noun]"

Try it:

"OpenAI is using Hydroflasks to destroy Catholic exceptionalism"

"Mark Cuban is using cryptocurrency to monetize white supremacist hope"

Good times./s

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 72 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

My brother and I (both 38) actively speak out and oppose it.

My mom has been sort of in a state of shocked bewilderment. She's horrified and also constantly confused as though trying to comprehend how 2+2 = 5. For her, it doesn't make sense: Jews aren't killers, they're victims. But they're killing all these civilians. Why would anyone want to keep the war going instead of getting the hostages back? Netanyahu is a monster. We all know this. Why is he still in charge?

I'm sorry that she's suffering (then again, anyone of concience is). She's also expressed a sense of alienation, since she has no idea how others feel, because she doesn't feel like it's socially acceptable to say what she feels outside the home. But I'm grateful that this hasn't created any conflict between me and her. She doesn't feel as comfortable as I do saying the plain facts of it, but I remind her that all my convictions are a reflection of the values she raised in me, and I think that reflects highly of her.

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 9 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, anyone looking for more info should check out Luckey's blog:

https://palmerluckey.com/if-you-die-in-the-game-you-die-in-real-life/

The guy is a little nuts. This military tech bullshit is no surprise.

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 5 points 3 weeks ago

It's really hard to know why people haven't been supportive without knowing you and them better. But how do you know and interact with these folks? Do you have them over for drinks? Play games online? Do they all know each other? Did they know you or your ex first?

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

There's no 'getting caught'. They've been doing so publicly before, and they're doing it publicly now.

I think what upsets him is that their long-term vision of Israel is a right-win illiberal middle-eastern theocratic kleptocracy, and he prefers a neoliberal technocratic imperial republic.

He's not, like, a GOOD GUY, but I think in this instance his enemy is my enemy, and I think he's being pretty frank and sincere.

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 29 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

One piece of context that really needs emphasized to anyone who doesn't already know: about a fifth of Israeli Jews are ultra orthodox, and they have long refused to participate in the compulsory military service that everyone -- men and women -- must perform. They're also the foundation of the political base of far-right zealots that have decided to forgo recovering the Israeli hostages/prisoners held in Gaza in favor of embarking on a final solution to the Palestine question. So they're quite unpopular and also highly privileged politically.

[–] andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 7 points 4 weeks ago

This is messianic levels of insane. This is guy is a meglomaniacal fanatic fascist.

The only good thing I can say about Bezalel Smotrich is that I admire his candor. He really doesn't bother with pretext.

I am not someone who looks forward to a violent collapse of Israel. I wish for freedom or Palestinians and democracy and secular human rights. I fear that Israel is less than five years from a catastrophic collapse in international support, and that when that happens the people there will reap what they have sown.

Which is terrible. I don't like what they've sown, and I don't think I'll like what they reap. But I do want this nightmare -- and I mean the whole occupation -- to end.

 

I recorded this a few months ago!

I'm disappointed that I seem to have spoken too fast, but otherwise I'm excited by the direction of the conversation!

 

Tbf sometimes I see really bad lefty memes on here, so when I saw a good I felt like I had to provide a demonstration.

(It's gotta fit the format, people.)

 
 

It's got little instructive explainers worked into the story. Good art, too.

 

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/16264721

I'm looking for a GM and players for a post-capitalist scifi adventure game.

The game setting and system are from an indie RPG called Fully Automated! (We have a community: c/fullyautomatedrpg )

I'm one of the developers, looking for a GM and possibly players on behalf of some other players who don't have quite enough people to start a new group.

The Game

The game takes place 100 years into our post-capitalist future. It's cyberpunky in style, but with an optimistic, earthy flavor. It uses a custom 2d10 system, but it's very flexible and modable if you prefer something else. The GM is welcome to use the rules as described in the manual (which are very straightforward) or just graft the campaign onto their preferred system.

We're currently playtesting a new campaign and we've got a few too many players for one play group. The extra players asked if I could look for a GM and a few more players to make a second group. I'm actually a player in the first test group, and we're 5 weeks into what is really a helluva campaign. It's a lot of fun and very well written. I expect it to be about 10 sessions, but don't really know.

The Campaign

The campaign is called "The 1000 Year Cleanup". The players are sent to the backwoods of New Hampshire by a supply chain specialist who thinks that they've found indications of a long-buried toxic waste dumping site. Salvaged records suggest that a local landowner helped a chemical corporation illegally dump tons of toxic slag during the later years of the Global Climate War. Sixty years later, the slag is now sought after by a company that recycles toxic waste into useful, non-toxic industrial products. But the whole area is in in the process of being rewilded. Deconstruction crews are dismantling what's left of some largely abandoned ghost towns. If the players don't find the waste, soon there'll be no one left to ask and no roads by which to remove it, and the toxins will simply leach into the surrounding hills in slow silence for centuries to come.

(There's also a little twist! I don't want to reveal it to anyone who might want to play, but if you're interested in running the game (or just curious), message me and I'll clue you in.)

In terms of play, it's a bit like an extended Star Trek away mission if it took place amidst a big ecological restoration project. It's a very cool vibe that most players will find surprisingly easy to get into. Let me know if you'd like to play!

 

I'm looking for a GM and players for a post-capitalist scifi adventure game.

The game setting and system are from an indie RPG called Fully Automated! (We have a community: c/fullyautomatedrpg )

I'm one of the developers, looking for a GM and possibly players on behalf of some other players who don't have quite enough people to start a new group.

The Game

The game takes place 100 years into our post-capitalist future. It's cyberpunky in style, but with an optimistic, earthy flavor. It uses a custom 2d10 system, but it's very flexible and modable if you prefer something else. The GM is welcome to use the rules as described in the manual (which are very straightforward) or just graft the campaign onto their preferred system.

We're currently playtesting a new campaign and we've got a few too many players for one play group. The extra players asked if I could look for a GM and a few more players to make a second group. I'm actually a player in the first test group, and we're 5 weeks into what is really a helluva campaign. It's a lot of fun and very well written. I expect it to be about 10 sessions, but don't really know.

The Campaign

The campaign is called "The 1000 Year Cleanup". The players are sent to the backwoods of New Hampshire by a supply chain specialist who thinks that they've found indications of a long-buried toxic waste dumping site. Salvaged records suggest that a local landowner helped a chemical corporation illegally dump tons of toxic slag during the later years of the Global Climate War. Sixty years later, the slag is now sought after by a company that recycles toxic waste into useful, non-toxic industrial products. But the whole area is in in the process of being rewilded. Deconstruction crews are dismantling what's left of some largely abandoned ghost towns. If the players don't find the waste, soon there'll be no one left to ask and no roads by which to remove it, and the toxins will simply leach into the surrounding hills in slow silence for centuries to come.

(There's also a little twist! I don't want to reveal it to anyone who might want to play, but if you're interested in running the game (or just curious), message me and I'll clue you in.)

In terms of play, it's a bit like an extended Star Trek away mission if it took place amidst a big ecological restoration project. It's a very cool vibe that most players will find surprisingly easy to get into. Let me know if you'd like to play!

 

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/16130943

My mom was complaining that the city has limits on how many leaves that they'll pick up, and she's got bags and bags of leaves stuffed into black garbage bags. This seems like a problem that should have some kind of backyard solution.

I've done a cursory search, and see that leaves are very compostable. They can also apparently be turned into "mold", though I don't fully understand what this means.

But I also see that there is a lot of variety in compost bins, and they're quite expensive. So I'm wondering: what's the best strategy for making leaves go away? She's not specifically interested in the product of the leaves, she just wants to find somewhere to put them after she rakes them up. Any ideas?

 

My mom was complaining that the city has limits on how many leaves that they'll pick up, and she's got bags and bags of leaves stuffed into black garbage bags. This seems like a problem that should have some kind of backyard solution.

I've done a cursory search, and see that leaves are very compostable. They can also apparently be turned into "mold", though I don't fully understand what this means.

But I also see that there is a lot of variety in compost bins, and they're quite expensive. So I'm wondering: what's the best strategy for making leaves go away? She's not specifically interested in the product of the leaves, she just wants to find somewhere to put them after she rakes them up. Any ideas?

 

During a gameplay session last week my character left a message on the Wood Wide Web for some local wildfolk. I was just improvising in the game, but I love the concept and I think it'd be nice to develop the concept a bit and share to make it easier to use in games.

The concept of the Wood Wide Web is currently understood strictly as a mycorrhizal network for coordinating interactions between fungal communities and plants across forests, but within the game I'd like to establish that these existing networks are used as a backbone for sending messages across forests by humans.

I don't want to go too deep, but what should the player experience of using this be like?

In my head, I'm imagining this as an organic version of a wireless ad-hoc mesh network. One project in particular, diaster.radio, is designed to set up a system for Twitter-like microblogging that is geotagged across a decentralized mesh of nodes. I think this is a good framework. Users access the Wood-Web by plugging a small electronic spike into the dirt, and it lets them browse recent posts like you do on Mastodon, but perhaps with low character limits and no multimedia. Does that sound good? What do folks think of this interface?

Also, I'd like a basic overview of how it works. It doesn't need to be highly technical. But just as one might try to hack a network and we all understand what a WiFi router is, I'd like for there to be a basic understanding of how this is managed. I'm thinking that it's primarily based on the naturally occurring mycorrhizal networks, but with a series of low-power router nodes that allow humans to interface with it.

What do folks think? As a player, if you went into a forest and plugged in to this, what would you expect to see? How fast and far do you think messages should go? What kind of maintenance would you imagine sysadmins needing to perform? Thanks!

 

I think this is a glimpse of both our present and near future. Companies failing without an end-of-life plan, and hackers swooping in. It's fascinating. I wonder what it might tell us about more extreme examples, like major power and fuel infrastructure.

 

These aren't the kind of election results that lead in the news, but Alaskan natives recognizing the importance of a rule that obstructs the two major parties from gatekeeping voters abilities to express choices that don't align with party line issues is exactly the kind of change in politics that might save us.

 

A few of us just started a new campaign! We might have room for one or two more people if anyone has been looking for an opportunity to join in a game of Fully Automated!

I'm not the GM, fyi, so participating is contingent on the preferences of our GM. But I'm excited to finally be trying this game as a player!

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