BloodKraken

Dunno how often I'll be posting, but let's give this a try.Mostly probably going to be gaming stuff and snake-related things since those are my special interests, but expect random other stuff here and there as the mood strikes me. White, trans, female,...

[bloodkraken]

So, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted here. Brought back by virtue of I’m actually trying to do productive game dev and related work now, and having some semblance of a social media presence seems helpful for that. For everyone who’s interested, stick around, and hopefully I’ll have stuff to share on that front soon, on top of the usual mix of content here.

[prokopetz]

I realise it’s a very minor peeve to set alongside much more serious concerns, but you know what gets me about the whole “the males are big gnarly monsterboys and the females are human ladies wearing body paint” trope in fantasy critter design?

Dentition.

That is, the size, shape and arrangement of the teeth.

Evolutionary speaking, dietary needs and opportunities dictate dentition; you develop different sorts of teeth for different types of diets. Even if we’re talking about a magically created species and evolution isn’t a factor, let’s assume for the sake of argument that whoever created them knew what they were doing and gave them the correct sort of teeth for their dietary needs.

So if the males and females have totally different dentition, that only makes sense if we’re proposing that the sexes have totally different dietary needs.

Imagine a sapient species where 50% of them are obligate carnivores adapted to a feast-and-fast intake cycle, and the other 50% are generalist omnivores adapted to frequent small meals.

If they’re meant to be a natural species, what sort of bizarre evolutionary pressures would yield that arrangement? Extreme dietary dimorphism is practically unheard-of in nature, at least among land-dwelling vertebrates, so the explanation has gotta be a good one!

And what sort of society would they build as a result?

[bloodkraken]

What continually surprises and disappoints me is that I can’t think of a single bad thing that the republican party doesn’t strongly favour.

Murder? Check

Slavery? Check

Rape? Check

War? Check

Terrorism? Check

Genocide? Check

Racism? Check

Misogyny? Check

Antisemitism? Check

Homophobia? Check

Ableism? Check

Religious discrimination? Check

Mass shootings? Check

Poverty? Check

Fascism? Check

Censorship? Check

Child abuse? Check

Working people to death? Check

Hunger? Check

Homelessness? Check

Corporate monopolies? Check

Illness? Check

Ignorance? Check

Dishonesty? Check

Hypocrisy? Check

Natural disasters? Check

Extinctions? Check

And that’s just off the top of my head. The scale or impact doesn’t seem to matter; as long as it’s unequivocally bad for everyone, they’ll enthusiastically and publicly endorse it, for seemingly no reason other than it hurts people.

[bloodkraken]

A valiant attempt, but that is not, in fact, how to properly hide.

[thedemsocialist-deactivated2018]

A basic income for everyone? Yes, Finland shows it really can work

Trials suggest it can liberate jobless people, says the Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty

In a speck of a village deep in the Finnish countryside, a man gets money for free. Each month, almost €560 (£500) is dropped into his bank account, with no strings attached. The cash is his to use as he wants. Who is his benefactor? The Helsinki government. The prelude to a thriller, perhaps, or some reality TV. But Juha Järvinen’s story is ultimately more exciting. He is a human lab rat in an experiment that could help to shape the future of the west.

Last Christmas, Järvinen was selected by the state as one of 2,000 unemployed people for a trial of universal basic income. You may have heard of UBI, or the policy of literally giving people money for nothing. It’s an idea that lights up the brains of both radical leftists – John McDonnell and Bernie Sanders – and Silicon Valley plutocrats such as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. And in the long slump that has followed the banking crash, it is one of the few alternatives put forward that doesn’t taste like a reheat.

Yet hardly anyone knows what it might actually look like. For all the fuss, Finland is the first European country to launch a major dry run. It is not the purists’ UBI – which would give everyone, even billionaires, a monthly sum. Nor will Finlandpublish any results until the two-year pilot is over at the end of 2018. In the meantime, we rely on the testimony of participants such as Järvinen. Which is why I have to fly to Helsinki, then drive the five hours to meet him.

Ask Järvinen what difference money for nothing has made to his life, and you are marched over to his workshop. Inside is film-making equipment, a blackboard on which is scrawled plans for an artists’ version of Airbnb, and an entire little room where he makes shaman drums that sell for up to €900. All this while helping to bring up six children. All those free euros have driven him to work harder than ever.

None of this would have been possible before he received UBI. Until this year, Järvinen was on dole money; the Finnish equivalent of the jobcentre was always on his case about job applications and training. Ideas flow out of Järvinen as easily as water from a tap, yet he could exercise none of his initiative for fear of arousing bureaucratic scrutiny.

[ifshehadwings]

UNIVERSAL. BASIC. INCOME. IS. THE. SOLUTION!!!! 

Listen tho, it’s a solution that everyone can get behind. In its purest form, it’s completely egalitarian. Every citizen gets the same amount regardless of their income. It allows ALL people to meet their basic needs and thus should nearly eliminate homelessness, hunger, etc. And because it’s the same for every citizen, there’s no onerous process where you have to prove you ~~really need it~ These are the things that liberals and progressives like about it. BUT! THE FUN DOESN’T STOP THERE! 

No, this is also a libertarian solution that conservatives should be able to get behind if they can just take half a step back from their violent hatred of poor people. By implementing universal basic income, you immediately eliminate probably dozens of government agencies. All of the institutions that micromanage who gets federal/state assistance and how much and for how long and under what circumstances – gone. Everybody gets a check. It’s that simple. You need one check printing agency and that’s it. It also gives everyone the completely free choice of what to do with that money. If someone chooses to waste it and not use it to secure their basic needs, that’s completely up to them. And they will have to deal with the consequences of their actions. 

In my mind, with universal basic income, the only other major federal program we would need would be GODDAMN SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE. These two things together I think could create more freedom and equality than any other plan that doesn’t involve time travel. You have enough money to put a roof over your head and feed yourself. You can go to the doctor if you’re sick or injured. When you don’t have to worry about your basic human needs being met, there are so many more possibilities. 

[unicornempire]

I’m so glad that some countries are taking UBI seriously and implementing it so that we can actually learn about how to make it work rather than just listening to Republicants insist that it never could. I’m surprised to see that there isn’t an income cutoff where, at a certain income point, but I suppose that way they can’t argue that it’s unfair (as if a millionaire would ever notice an extra $600/mo) 

[dasebeleren]

A First Step

Elaine Chase addresses a community issue.

Today, this article went up on the mothership stating that actions have been taken against perpetrators in the harassment of Christine Sprankle. What actions have been taken? Judging from Jeremy Hambly’s twitter feed, he appears to have just received a lifetime ban along with the destruction of his MTGO account.

Justice begins here.

[bloodkraken]

There’s something that I feel like alot of people don’t understand about money

Rich people are evil. That isn’t a generalization or an exaggeration. Every single rich person in the world is sufficiently evil that I wouldn’t feel a single moral compunction about gunning them down in cold blood. Why? Let’s do some math.

Using nice round numbers: A salary of $100,000 per year is a pretty good income, and will allow someone to have a pretty good lifestyle. Nothing super extravagant, but definitely sufficient and not wanting for anything important.

A million dollars per year ($1,000,000) is 10 times that. That’s enough to support 10 people on that pretty good lifestyle. Or, more likely, 2-5 people on a luxurious lifestyle, since most households don’t have 10 people, or have more than one person producing income.

For the sake of round numbers, let’s say the average person lives 100 years. A person who makes a million dollars per year, for a hundred years, would make a hundred million dollars over that lifetime. $100,000,000. With that amount of money, a person is entirely capable of supporting themselves and a modest family, on a luxurious lifestyle, for 100 years, without working a single day. That isn’t subsistence or just-getting-by, that’s luxury the likes of which the vast majority of people can’t even dream of experiencing.

Let’s say a person has a billion dollars. That’s $1,000,000,000. Ten times that lifetime-luxury level. A person with that much money could literally set 90% of their money on fire and still be set for life, without ever working a day. That is, their quality of life and overall happiness would be completely unchanged if they got rid of 90% or more of their money.

According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, the poverty line for most of the US is $11,770 for an individual (and increases somewhat linearly with the number of people in the household). Let’s round that to $10,000. That is, a person who makes $10,000 per year is considered in poverty. By definition, that person doesn’t have enough income to survive, and needs significant increase in income in order to have anything resembling a comfortable lifestyle. Stats from the same Department show that in 2015, 43.1 million US residents were below the poverty line. We’ll round that to 40 million (that’s 40,000,000).

According to the most recent Forbes report (March 2017), there are 2,043 people in the world who have at least a billion dollars; let’s round that to 2,000. Keep that number in mind. And those 2,000 people have a combined wealth of $7.6 trillion. $7,600,000,000,000.

Let’s consider a hypothetical billionaire who has exactly 1 billion dollars in wealth. As previously established, this person could give away 90% of their wealth and still be set for life. 90% is 900 million dollars. $900,000,000.

For the sake of round numbers, let’s say that taking a person who is at that poverty level of $10,000 up to $20,000 per year would move them from unable to survive, up to a getting-by level. Not a great income, but enough to survive on. Definitely a major increase in quality of life. Keeping our assumption that the average person lives 100 years, that means a total lifetime income difference of a million dollars. Our hypothetical billionaire could, therefore, take 900 people completely out of poverty for life, without noticing a single change in their own quality of life, while still keeping themselves at a luxurious lifestyle and never working a single day.

Let’s go back to that $7 trillion amount. 90% of that is $6.3 trillion. That means those 2,000 people could, right now, pull 6.3 million people out of poverty for their entire lives, and not a single one of those 2,000 people would notice any change in their happiness or quality of life. 6,300,000 people taken out of poverty, instantly, and at no real cost.

And that’s by just handing out money at random. If that money was put toward actually improving the systems that cause poverty in the first place, developing infrastructure, distributing resources, improving healthcare, and generally working toward a better world, the effects would be substantially greater.

(Also, none of this accounts for the fact that wealth isn’t static. Someone with that much money is bringing in vast sums via investments and financial trading, meaning the actual amount they could afford to give up would be significantly greater.)

The thing about rich people? They know this. Every single one of them is aware of how rich they are. They know perfectly well that they could make the world a vastly better place for everyone. They know that spending that money wouldn’t actually require them to change their lifestyles in any significant sense. And they choose not to. Because to them, the only thing that matters is being better than other people. To them, money is some abstract thing where all that matters is having their number go up. When they see people starving, or dying of treatable illnesses, they feel *good* about it, because it means they’re "better” than those people. They revel in death and suffering, and do whatever they can to spread it, because that’s the only way they can feel good about themselves.

And also, bear in mind that wealth distribution isn’t even across demographics. It isn’t an accident that poverty disproportionately affects women, people of colour, LGBT+, the mentally ill. They target people who are already vulnerable specifically because they know they can get away with it.

The act of being rich is, ultimately, an act of violence, and one specifically targeted at people who are already less able to defend themselves. It’s a deliberate and intentional process by which to inflict pain on the vulnerable, in order that a few sadists with poor self-esteem get to watch an imaginary number go up.

Every single rich person is evil. Full stop. Every single one of them needs to die before a healthy society is possible. The sooner the better.

[bloodkraken]

Dragonfall 0.3.2.5 Alpha

There isn't as much here as I'd like to have for a new content release, but I'm kind of fed up with not posting anything new for so long. New version link:

https://mega.nz/#!r4EXCDhY!ZduQeqz30M3poCoKH7BHGiCI7ND1MibOeKSgcB2M_oE

The changelog is kind of hazy since it's been so long, but here's what I can say confidently is new:

-A little new story content. It's not super complete, but it's playable through to a checkpoint of sorts. I'll be going through and touching it up for the next build.

-A new non-story area that contains a bit of loot and some enemies. Not necessary to progress through, but it could be useful to get a bit of extra money and XP if someone is having trouble. (The game is designed and tested so that grinding won't ever be necessary, but I feel that it's good to have the option if people want to do so)

-Speaking of difficulty, a new option in the menu to set the difficulty. It's a bit experimental and might be buggy, but there's five options to choose from: Story, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Impossible. You can change it at any time, so experiment to see which is the best fit for your play style.

-Side missions are working correctly now, and some of the people in the castle will offer missions if you talk to them. I'll be adding more missions as the game progresses.

-Some new types of recruitable enemies, which have their own classes and abilities to make use of.

-Probably other minor stuff that I'm not remembering offhand

The plan going forward is to first of all finish the chunk of plot that the game leaves off in the middle of, and a more climactic ending to the section. The tentative goal then is to do the next major release within 3-4 weeks, if I'm able to do so, when I'm more confident in labeling it 0.3.3 proper.

On the business side of things: As some of you may have noticed, I changed the patreon from charging per month to per major game release. The main reason being I'm simply not comfortable taking in money for a month where I didn't release anything. In the ideal situation, I'd get out one release per month anyway, but obviously life happened and I wound up disappearing for awhile. I very much appreciate everyone who's contributed so far, and I'm intending to release something that's worthy of those contributions. That said, Dragonfall is, and always will be, completely free to play. Nobody should feel obligated to pay for it.

Questions, comments, concerns, and other constructive feedback are always welcome. Thanks for playing!

[autisticbisexualsokka]

I have a shocking hypothesis

I theorize that people with allism have so many of the difficulties they do because they often doubt the reliability of their own senses. Despite being able to clearly see you, they often expect you to make frequent noises while they are talking. They will also often consider touching you to be part of a conversation. It suggests they need to engage at least two, and preferably three, senses to be sure of your existence.

[fandomsandfeminism]

Weeping Angels and everything that sucks  about Steven Moffat: The Full Text Transcript

Video Part 1

Video Part 2

Full text transcript below:

Keep reading

[bloodkraken]

Dragonfall 0.3.2 Release

Hasn’t been mentioned much specifically here lately, but I’ve gotten together some significant progress on Dragonfall recently. Anyone who wants to have a look is more than welcome.

Link: https://mega.nz/#!35UnERJD!DNbe8CuhPOtUIBBH_Ax9mbQtMOqPxLO6uk1WAjz0klY

Dev Blog: http://dragonfallgame.blogspot.com/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BloodKraken

[bloodkraken]

NPC Soldier: We’ve been ordered to take this base, but we only have 10 men. We’d get completely wiped out, we’re not going in there.

Non-military hero: What can I do to help?

NPC Soldier: Go take that base. Alone. We’ll be back here waiting for you to finish.

Sure, NPC. I’ll get right on it.

[bloodkraken]

Ok evolution, we need to have a talk.

What in heaven’s name possessed you to make “too hungry to eat” be a thing that exists.

[magicjudge]

FYI

In the past few weeks, some users here made it clear in comments on some of my posts that they don’t want “identity politics” or “gender stuff” in their MtG content or on my blog.

Apparently, because I’m providing a service in answering questions here, I’m supposed to keep quiet about my own feelings on certain issues when they intersect with the content I’m creating here.

Allow me to make things perfectly clear: That ain’t gonna happen.

While I do my utmost to present myself professionally here, there are some things about which I simply refuse to be silent. I don’t have the luxury that many in the Magic community have to simply ignore sexism, racism, transphobia, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination.  

I am a trans woman, and my lived experience brings me face to face with these things regularly. I will not stay silent when I see these things happening in our community. I will not stay silent when someone misgenders a trans or non-binary character. I will not stay silent when someone makes a sexist or misogynistic joke. I will not answer questions from anyone whose username is offensive in any of these ways.

If you’re going to come to my blog and expect me to spend my time and energy to answer your questions, then these are the conditions by which you’re asking it. If you don’t like that, then go find another judge to help you.

[bloodkraken]

In my experience, “keep politics out of it” generally means “I'm not regularly harmed or endangered by this stuff, and it makes me uncomfortable when you remind me that it exists”.

[space-general]

There are two types of DM.

“You can’t do that.”

“*Sigh* Roll for it.”

[bloodkraken]

So, in the general sense, I’m opposed to violence.

That said, if a dangerous animal is going around threatening people, it needs to be dealt with in some fashion. Yes, sometimes it’s possible to capture it without harming it, or to redirect it to an area of wilderness with no human inhabitants, but those are only doable if the animal and the risk it poses are identified before it winds up being a direct danger. Once it’s around people and actively threatening harm, there’s no longer any time to create and implement a non-violent plan for removal, because any delay is going to result in people getting hurt or killed. At that point, the only remaining option is to put it down in order to protect peoples’ basic safety.

It isn’t possible to negotiate or bargain with it, because an animal has a fundamentally different perspective on what is and isn’t preserving than a human does, and is on a base level incapable of communicating with the people it’s harming. There’s no point to trying to convince it that people are valuable and worth preserving, because its brain simply doesn’t have the functionality to recognize humans as anything other than either threats or prey, and in either case it wants to eliminate them.

When faced with a dangerous threat that is fundamentally incapable of recognizing anything other than violence as potential solutions, and inherently holds no regard for human life, the only possible response is a violent one. A nonviolent response is only possible if the aggressor is capable of understanding the concept of nonviolence in the first place, and anyone who condemns a violent response to such a threat is demonstrating that they share a similar disregard for human life as the creature they’re attempting to protect.

In summary: #killallnazis

[manyblinkinglights]

id wreak mayhem for a really good scifi where sight was considered as exotic and numinous as telepathy by the protag species

[roachpatrol]

#everybody else uses sonar or long whiskers and that thing with the sensing electrical impulses#meanwhile: humans can ‘see’ which is a thing which is like and yet unlike ordinary perception#it would also only ever come into play in the same frivolous ‘VULCAN STRENGTH’ sort of way as Spock’s extra attributes#for maximum effect vision would be faithfully written as 100% an asspull in the best way

what the fuck dude this is awesome i want this too now

[curlicuecal]

Okay, but what about those deep sea fish that produce light at a wavelength that *only they can see.* Predators that can somehow sense you in a completely undectable and unfathomable manner to you; they might as well be psychic.

[manyblinkinglights]

YES, EXACTLY–vision is SUCH an asspull?? Sometimes it’s “"dark”“ and we can’t see anything. And also we’re impaired for plot reasons! Sometimes ALIEN WEAPONRY or otherwise-innocuous ship components are ”“too bright”“ and we yell and try to hide, subject to some sort of obscure, tortuous imperative. The rest of the time we can UNERRINGLY tell when anyone is trying to play pranks on us, the names and emotional/physical status of EVERY SINGLE BEING IN THE ROOM (or, when outside civilized warrens, ”“line of sight”“)–and yes, of course, can’t forget about our nigh-mythical fighting arts revolving around insane dodging skills.

And SNIPING. And also, god, fuck–don’t forget about completely arbitrary “”””atmospheric disturbances””” (fog, smoke–the new “ionic interference”) ALSO plottasatically rendering our abilities moot.

[glimmerbulb]

Plus, some people have more powerful Vision than others, but some people have a very short effective range of Vision. However, humans have come up with devices that “change the angles of refraction” of the “light” so that the naturally impaired have their skills enhanced–but they can always be knocked off their faces or be broken.

Also some people are terrible at normal Vision work, but have excellent night vision and are skilled at working under adverse conditions.

Oooh, and human art is almost entirely Vision based. Think about non-seeing aliens trying to access the majority of human art!

[manyblinkinglights]

IM!!! SCREAMING!!! GLASSES. Glasses are SUCH another great Weird Alien Gimmick. God–you get all used to your Human friend and their bizarre abilities, you just start to really trust in and rely on them in tight places and problem-solving a little bit, then you get fucken marooned on a fucken planetoid somewhere and they just in this very small little voice, after you have pulled them from the wreckage and sat down to go over your options, inform you that they’ve lost their glasses.

[roachpatrol]

Oh my god and an episode where we’re up against Evil Humans and our heros turn to their humans like ‘you can see them, right, you can tell when they’re near? you can counter them?’ and our hero is genuinely shaken and worried— they’ve got high-tech military mechanical enhancers, the devices strapped to their heads let them see anywhere, they can operate in near-absolute ‘darkness’, they can operate in near-lethal ‘brightness’, they can see through walls— not doors, not glass, but walls. 

Then we have a heroic scene where the crew’s human is the scrappy, desperate underdog for once instead of the cool and collected superbeing. It is super cool. The human and the captain probably mack wildly on one another in medbay after this. Roll credits. 

[gutterowl-deactivated20210623]

Person 1:  I dunno, dude.  This ‘light’ stuff sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me.  I mean, how do we know it’s even real?

Person 2:  Seriously, how can something be a wave and a particle?  That doesn’t even make sense.

Mysterious Human: Even if you cannot perceive the light, you can feel its warmth–

Person 1: Oh my god, please shut it with the mystical hoo-hah.  You’re insufferable.

[roachpatrol]

Mysterious, somewhat exasperated Human: the ‘light’ enters the sensitive paired apertures in our faces, passing through biological lenses and chambers to stimulate specific nerves we call ‘rods’ and ‘cones’. one set of nerves tells us the volume of light we’re perceiving, while the other estimates the wavelength frequency. the total input creates in our mind a continuous sonarscape of immense complexity, where we can perceive ‘textures’ that are impossible to understand with mere sound or touch. this is why my people’s communication devices are small, flat, silent boards: we ‘read’ the patterns of light they emit as language and ‘watch’ the patterns of light they emit as sonarscapes.

Captain: okay…. sounds fake, but okay…

[gutterowl-deactivated20210623]

And they just keep on making up new bullshit rules for how light works, like

Navigator: Warp drive engaged.  We are approaching 90% of the Lorentz limit.

Human:  What now?

Navigator:  Oh, uh, it’s really complex, but lemme try.  So, matter can only move so fast through space, right?  Like absolutely, nothing can ever ever possibly go faster than like about 3 hundred million meters per second–

Human: Ah yes.  The speed of light.

Navigator:  …oh for fuck’s sake.

[roachpatrol]

Captain: My god! Time! Has… frozen! 

Human: Fuuuuuuuuck. 

Captain: What?

Human: Remember how light is a wave and a particle?

Captain: Yes, we mention this every episode. 

Human: Yeah, light’s frozen along with everything else. I can’t see shit. 

Captain: My god! Our sonar doesn’t work either! The soundwaves— they can’t propagate through this frozen air! We’ll have to use just our whiskers!

Human: Fuuuuuuuuck. 

[gutterowl-deactivated20210623]

The fanfiction for this show has to be amazing.

“Shh. Don’t try to hide your needs, Captain,” Hue Mann soothed.  “My sight has told me all about your traumatic memories of the war.”

“What?” Captain gasped.  “But…how…?”

“The light knows all,” explained Hue.  “Time slows down at the speed of light.  It sees all of the past..and all of the future.”

“And what is it telling you now?” questioned the Captain.

Hue leaned in close. “It tells me, ‘Mate with them now, you lovestruck fool!”

“Damn you, Hue Mann.  Damn you and your penetrating ‘eyes.’”

“Oh,” breathed Hue, voice husky and sexual.  “That’s not all my eyes can…penetrate.” 

[em-kellesvig]

goddamn, you people amaze me.

[kowabungadoodles]

I love the idea that the protag species has telepathy as ‘boring normal standard’ senses and they can’t understand why human thoughts seems so strange, fragmented, occasionally blank… until they realise that a great of human thought is ‘visual’ and so can’t be heard… 

[annlarimer]

“Lori, what do your Human eyes see?”

“Coupla billboards, and it looks like it might rain.”

[elljayvee]

This keeps getting better

[vassraptor]

This is so cute. Your human crewmember is getting a crush on another human. Time to observe the humans’ weird yet endearing courtship rituals.

“Tell me all about them! What do you like about them?”

“Well, they have these amazing eyes…”

“Yeah? Better at the the wavemapping thing than yours?”

“…I don’t know how good their eyes are at seeing. They’re just this beautiful shade of brown.”

“Wait. You wavemap each other’s wavemapping organs? And have opinions about what nice frequencies they refract the waves at?”

“Yes? What’s so strange about this?”

“I thought your ‘vision’ was passive. Do you listen to each other’s ears too? And like the smell of each other’s noses?”

“Like you’ve never touched someone’s whiskers with your whiskers.”

“…That’s different.”

[bloodkraken]

“How many times have I told you, it’s not a religious thing.”

“You spend hours every day just sitting in front of a rectangle not doing anything. Sounds religious to me.”

“No, the rectangle has pictures on it, and-”

“Has what now?”

*sigh*