Did not expect to still be here, but eh

I'ma be real- it's been years now, and it's, like, pleasant! I like it here! Feel free to interact, I'm happy to meet folks.

[degenerate-cymae]

Competing Access Needs is when two people need incompatible things in order for the same event/service/etc to be accessible to them. This sucks and is hard to deal with.

There's a version of this I see a lot in queer political arguments which I'm going to call Competing Ontological Needs. When two people need the same thing to be in two incompatible ontological categories. Or need the same thing to be logically impossible and not.

Now put like that obviously it's nonsense. Ontological categories are abstractions and where we draw their boundaries doesn't change the facts about the things in them. You can't *need* pluto to be a planet because no physical facts, either about pluto or about anything else, change depending on if pluto is "really" a planet or not.

But people sure do get really really scared and angry when they argue about what categories we should put different people and the things they do in! Obviously it makes sense to say "I categorize myself this way, and if you're not thinking about me with that same abstraction it means we don't understand eachother well which is sad". But the thing I see a lot is more concrete than that.

The common unspoken syllogism is "It is politically acceptable to do bad things to people if they are X, I don't want bad things to happen to me, so I need to not be an X". With variations like "if it was possible for Y to happen then it would be mandatory, Y is bad, thus I need to to not be possible for Y to happen". Or "Z is a good kind of thing to be, I dislike z, therefore z is not a kind of Z"

The fact it's unspoken sucks, because then you get into flaming rows where one party is making the totally pedestrian observation that someone has the characteristics of an X or that Y is totally possible, and the person they're talking to is reacting like this is a threat of immediate violence. Because if the unspoken syllogism were correct it totally would be! The prosecutor who argues that you're a murderer really is trying to commit literal violence against you by this argument! And in the ideal case is even morally correct to do so!

But often the unspoken syllogism doesn't work, or isn't universal, and so people get into arguments in which they need different things to be categorically true. And that sucks because settling arguments like that is even harder than settling ones about facts, and so often the apparent stakes are wildly different between participants.

It'd be really good if more of these could be defused by dismantling the syllogism. It doesn't need to be impossible for someone to change their sexuality, it just needs to not be mandatory. We don't need to argue about if this person is actually a woman, we can just stop doing bad things to her depending on which she is. We don't have to argue if AI can make "art" if we stop treating art as uniquely praiseworthy.

Especially when so many of the syllogisms are actually "in the 80s a political coalition made an argument that depends on X being Y, they won and did a really good thing, thus X must be Y". Which is extra insidious because if we take that as our argument then it's good to argue that X is Y *even if this is false and you know it's false*.

Sadly many of these syllogisms are correct factual descriptions of the political environment many people live in. And as long as that's true there's a genuine clash here which is really hard to escape from.

[fyrmayj]

Just finished reading Barons by Austin Frerick - a concise and uhhh. infuriatingly insightful. discussion of the modern-day barons of US and global food/ag industry. I really appreciated the whole book, but also some specific commentary in the conclusion. If you're interested in food system policy or even just learning more about the mega-powers influencing the US food and ag sectors, it's a really enlightening read with tangible solutions proposed at the end. Excerpt of the conclusion below the readmore.

I checked out a copy from the library but here's the author's website too!

Austin Frerick is an expert on agricultural and antitrust policy. He is the author of the book - Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of

"It might be easy to read this book and conclude that the American food system is broken. But a friend and mentor once admonished me for calling the food system broken because, as he put it, 'broken implies it once worked.' Thomas Jefferson's 'yeoman farmer' built his independence on the backs of enslaved men and women. The idyllic midwestern family farm was possible only because the Hpmestead Act parceled out land stolen from American Indians in the midst of a genocidal frenzy.

Even the New Deal Farm Bill, for all that it did to support economic and ecological balance, operated to benefit White farmers, who pocketed the New Deal farm supports and used them to push Black farmers off their land. White landowners got wealthier, and Black people got displaced. The consolidation of power in the American food system is tragic, and the current situation may feel hopeless, but the solution is not to return to some mythic past that never existed.

Yet the history of the American food system does reveal that it has always been shaped by societal decisions about who benefits from it and who does not. Nothing illustrates this point better than the trajectory orf slaughterhouse workers during the past century. When Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, slaughterhouses employed some of the most exploited and poorly paid workers in the American economy. Working in the slaughterhoise became a pathway to the middle class only because the federal government challenged the power of the Beef Trust and put rules in place to ensure that workers were fairly compensated and protected in the workplace. A robust middle class has always been the product of conscious political decisions.

...

If there's anything to take away from this book, it's that the idea of a free market, unshaped by politics, our institutions, and other societal forces, is a myth." [emphasis added]

-Austin Frerick, Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry

[prunejuicepls]

I pan handled from the end of 2017 to the middle of 2018 and here 10 of my notes

1. The Midwest has the most caring racists. The amount of sleeping bags and hot chocolate was surprising and heartwarming, the amount of racism was alarming.

2. People love to give you stuff in Las Vegas

3. Christians love to record themselves giving you a water bottle or a slice of pizza. This is a trap they are going to talk to you about god, and yes some (all) think you are homeless because you are a sinner

4. Most teenaged panhandlers look older than they are (dirty, stressed). Remember they're kids. Most aren't drug addicts. Most are abused for one thing or another. Most of the time it's for being queer.

5. Dont trust RV people ever

6. Dont sleep anywhere where you won't hear people coming and wake up. Trash, sticks, whatever makes noise when people rustle through it. Car camping is so much better.

7. Cops aren't people, they're some strange demon sent to fool you with riddles and drag you away. Treat them like the Fae

8. No one gives handouts in the Northeast

9. No one calls 911 if a homeless person is ODing in California

10. Humanity is so much more about love and connectedness than any of us can understand. Sometimes you have to take advantage of that to eat.

[jimbles-archive]

[blastr0]

Astonishing that the piece of Fallout music that makes me close to teary eyed comes from the worst game.

It's a simple little track, but for some reason it just makes me feel things. It's like it's saying, "Things have been bad for a while, and we're always gonna have problems, but for now things are gonna be okay," in musical form. What's doubly astonishing is this bordering on out-of-genre track is nestled amongst Mark Morgan inspired atmospheric tracks reminiscent of the original games' OSTs and also one or two more explicitly out-of-genre heavy metal tracks. The game is kind of crap, but the music is really good. The Fallout Wiki has posted (I believe) the entire OST on YT, so check it out if you wanted to know what it would sound like if Mark Morgan made music for Borderlands.

Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel Soundtrack

[blastr0]

[Deltarune] You're not a bad person if you did the weird route. You're not a coward if you watched someone else do it. If you're looking to examine or even just appreciate a text, it's best to understand everything it has to say. Deltarune's Weird Route and Undertale's No Mercy Route were both intentionally put there to be seen, and each has something to say with thematic relevance to the rest of the text. I'd argue that you can't seriously analyze either of these games without taking these alternate routes into account.

[localcoffeeshop]

“i have to listen to my body’s needs” secret boss fight written by person who has chronic and disabling wrist pain which has fundamentally changed his relationship to his hobbies and his job <- i care it as someone who has also had chronic pain in my wrist/hand for 5 years

[localcoffeeshop]

another thing i tend to think about with this. i also just think in chapter 5 there's a theme of care and dependency. the flowers have extreme guilt over being taken care of by asgore. flowery conceptualizes himself as weak and useless. in the dark world, his fantasy, he tries to return the care given to him to asgore to "make up for" asgore taking care of him when he should've died decades ago. it's an extreme example, but i also resonate with his feeling.

when your body or mind puts you in a situation where your reliance on other people becomes really explicit, you're trained by the world to see that as shameful or to see yourself as deficient. your efforts to ignore your needs just to avoid "being a burden," will leave you worse off. you punish yourself because of deeply internalized ableism.

regardless, even by virtue of being a living thing on this planet, you are already designed to need others. you have to listen to your body's needs even against a society that teaches you you shouldn't. you have to be okay with the fact that you have needs. sometimes your needs are different or are greater than the person next to you, and all you can do is listen to your body and turn to others when you need them. you're still a person when you need people.

when toby says this:

it's interesting to me how much he uses the language of deltarune to express this feeling. your hopes and dreams slipping away, and bitterness growing is literally the explanation we get for shadow crystals (and so wept the fallen star, making rivers with its tears. then, slowly, from the bitter water, something grew. it looked like glass). this is also the crushing feeling when you lose a sense of control when you're in pain, when you can't do things the way you want, the way you used to. but when you find yourself still able to fly, you do so because you've adapted. you've listened to your body. you've learned that listening to your body means changing the pace, letting yourself be cared for, letting yourself be helped.

as far as toby's said it, having to expand his team has made deltarune a better game. chapter 5 is so expansive because so many people helped to make it. Pink's fight has sprite work from guest artists, music with Camellia, bullets programmed by Toby's team. She is, to me, a love letter to Deltarune's development process as a whole and how it has shaped Toby, and a reflection of the kinds of thoughts Toby has shared with us about developing Deltarune alongside pain. I also think it's a beautiful follow-up to Gerson's themes of storytelling and authorship (letting go of "perfection" + accepting the contributions of others = both about rescinding control and embracing perseverance). Pink is also so much more than this, but I've been thinking about this a lot.

[sagescider]

sunsets as a major theme in chap 5 because undertale ends on a sunset. susie and noelle walk into the sunset together, happy. this is where the story is supposed to end. ralsei left a piece of pie on the floor of susie's bedroom because this is where the story ends. we're all friends and we're in the places we're supposed to be. but after the sunset darkness always falls. FUCK MEEE SHOOT ME. OH MY GOD. dtr as an exploration of what happens after. aftermath of tragedy aftermath of the honeymoon phase of a relationship aftermath of love changing you, for better or for worse. aftermath of childhood fantasies when you're growing up, you're changing. you've changed and you're still trying to tell the same stories, tell them in a way that reminds you of all the fun you used to have. UGGGHHHHH deltarune is so thematically dense i feel like i find a completely new pivotal thread every time i think about it

[blastr0]

[Fallout] Okay, I started prepping to write another entry in my Fallout fanfic (stay tuned) and ended up in another... let's call it a "Lore Hole." So, uh, you all like trains?

So we can see that rail companies pre-war were actually doing very well for themselves unlike in our world. In the southwest you had Barstow Express running lines from SoCal to Vegas and in the East you had New Appalachian Railroad and NH&M servicing Appalachia and New England respectively. There's a ton of rail infrastructure throughout the world, so what do we know about people utilizing it post-war?

So while the trains themselves aren't running in Fallout 76, the train stations themselves were being utilized by wastelanders as sort of... I guess "safe zones"? Protectrons are set up to act as vendors. Presumably these protectons were originally operating the ticket booths. We know the Appalachia region was experiencing an automation crisis pre-war, so this feels likely. So the trains aren't running in Appalachia, okay, sure. It's not that far removed from the bombs and we don't see any massive powers standing up in the region that could have both the capability and the need to have trains running again. Foundation maybe fits the bill, but it feels too early in their development.

While there is an extensive rail network found in Fallout 4's Boston we again never see the trains actually running. However, the Modiphius Fallout RPG expansion Winter of Atom seems to imply that trains were in operation, being run by... Diamond City. The first quest of Winter of Atom sees the players meet with Mayor McDonough and get tasked with recovering supplies from a caravan that was supposed to deliver vital shipments of food and medicine to the city. Only the spot the players end up at isn't the site of a sacked brahamin caravan, no, it's a derailed and still smoking train. Raiders apparently set off an explosive to take out the train. So, rail was being utilized in the Commonwealth during the winter prior to Fallout 4's beginning. Okay, sure, but why is that never mentioned or brought up anywhere in game? If the trains were still running, why are there still tons of pre-war trains still sitting on tracks, some of them still carrying suits of power armor inside locked up containers. Not so sure about this one from a world building perspective. For what it's worth, Magnolia in the Third Rail has a song titled "Train Train" which could imply the locomotive had some role in the overall culture of the Commonwealth, but, uh, I have my doubts. Anyway, as for Winter of Atom, I personally treat the Modiphius game as a tertiary source at best, which I will continue to do here.

Moving into the meat of this analysis, I think a lot of people, myself included, neglect the fact that Fallout: New Vegas gives us information that implies the NCR has functional and seemingly well used rail infrastructure.

We hear from Chomps Lewis, Eddie, and Trudy that the reason NCRCF even exists was to get convict labor to maintain the rail lines: Courier: "Tell me about the Powder Gangers." Chomps Lewis: "They're a bunch of escaped cons from down south. The NCR was using them to maintain the railways as part of their sentence." Courier: "Powder gangers?" Trudy: "Chain gangs, really. The NCR brought them in from California to work on the rail lines. Problem is, it turns out that giving convicts a bunch of dynamite and blasting powder isn't the best idea." Courier: "What can you tell me about the prison?" Eddie: "The NCR called it a 'work-release' prison. We lucky prisoners got the privilege of fixing up the rail lines and blasting rock for new lines." Finally, the New Vegas Official game guide states: "The NCR Correctional Facility is the dominant location of the central Mojave Wasteland. In the distant past, it was the Jean Conservancy, a low-security all-female prison. Under recent NCR control, it was used to house prisoners on work release. The prisoners worked the railroad parallel to the Long 15 under NCR trooper supervision, maintaining the vital land link between the Boneyard and New Vegas."

We know that the NCR were operating these rail lines from dialgoue with Chomps Lewis and Ike. Courier: "What does the NCR need with the cement? Chomps Lewis: "It all gets shipped by rail over towards Boulder City and Hoover Dam. The NCR's probably building fortifications with it all." Courier: "Where does the concrete come from?" Ike: "Most of the limestone comes from Quarry Junction out west. The supply had stopped for awhile because of a Deathclaw problem. I heard some badass wastelander killed the Deathclaws, and deliveries of limestone have been coming in again. I don't think they've gotten the trains up and running yet, but most of the concrete plant workers have come back to town now. Good for business."

So, we know the NCR was operating the rail lines that go into the Mojave Wasteland, or at least they were prior to the deathclaw infestation at Quarry Junction. That's likely how most NCR tourists were getting to The Strip in the first place.

There's a train station in Freeside that just so happens to be right next to the base of operations for Major Kieran's relief mission for the NCR supply corps - a food bank that only hands out food to NCR squatters stuck in Freeside. The train station itself is also the site of the stand-off between the NCR troops and Pacer at the end of G.I. Blues. Yes, I'm aware there's a giant rubble pile where the trains would have to run through, but let's say that's recent.

So the NCR's operating trains to New Vegas, but where are they coming from? The game guide states the lines were linking New Vegas and the Boneyard, but that's all the way on the coast. Was there any sort of central locations for the trains to operate from? Well, if you were paying attention in the first paragraph you may already see where this is going.

Trains found throughout the Mojave Wasteland all seem to come from this pre-war company: Barstow Express. Well, the official game guide calls it Barstow Express. To my eye this logo seems to say it's an "Express" line with the tagline "Barstow Strong." REGARDLESS, we can easily infer this company or these trains were operating out of Barstow, California. Now, while nothing I am about to say has been confirmed canon, it's more likely than not that the NCR city of Hub was founded in the ruins of Barstow.

Given the Hub's location in relation to the Boneyard, we can infer that Hub and Barstow are one in the same. Barstow is also situated on the intersection between Interstates 15 and 40, making it a centerpoint for major trade routes in the post-war era. And, if that's not good enough for you, let's just take a peek at the city of Barstow's website...

The Hub Of The West, eh? Works for me. In real life, Union Pacific and BNSF operate trains that move through Barstow, so given that in the world of Fallout the rail industry was booming it's entirely plausible there were a ton of trains sitting around for the NCR to commandeer.

So... yeah. NCR's got trains. Can we infer the extent of the rail infrastructure? I wouldn't say so. We know there's a line that goes from Vegas to the Boneyard, more likely than not moving through the Hub. Likely there's a line that goes north to Shady Sands too. That now begs the question of: where am I going with all this?

If the NCR has trains, how does Crimson Caravan... work? As far as we know they transport cargo on foot via brahmin caravans. There's no mention anywhere of them operating train lines. Come to think of it, we don't even hear about any post-war railroad companies. The implication that I get from the dialogue is that the railroads are all operated by the government itself.

Here's where I'm delving more into speculating. Could there be something with Kimball being close with Hub merchants and Crimson Caravan and intentionally withholding aid to clear the deathclaws and get the trains running again? We know Kimball loves deregulating stuff; the official FNV game guide has this to say regarding the NCR's economy: "During President Tandi's presidency, regulations limited the number of cattle head and the acreage of fields that could be owned by a single person. Despite constant pressure from the Stockmen's Association and Republican Farmer's Committee, such regulations loosened only a little so long as Tandi was in office. Following her death, however, they eroded until President Kimball overturned them completely." I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that he would pull a stunt like that. He is also personally from the Hub; again the official game guide states in the timeline section: "2273: Aaron Kimball retires from the NCR military and runs for office as one of Hub's political representatives..." I think intentionally kneecapping the government operated rail lines to enrich some allies from his home state seems exactly the sort of thing a shady guy like him would do.

Anyway, uh, yeah. Gonna have to contend with trains operating in my fanfic now, so that'll be fun. I'm quite fond of trains. In Fallout 2 and Fallout New Vegas the series was veering away from post-apocalypse and into western territory, so tonally speaking trains fit right in. Just need some horses...

[blastr0]

[Fallout] Infinitely aggravating to me that the faction that did more to actually aid the Vault Dweller than literally anyone else is the one that got completely shafted by the entire rest of the series.

Did everyone just collectively forget that the Followers of the Apocalypse joined the Vault Dweller in storming the Cathedral and actually help them fight the Super Mutants guarding the way to the Master? The cowards at the Brotherhood of Steel send three paladins to Mariposa to help kill the four door guards and then refuse to follow the Vault Dweller inside.

Pretty much the only impact the Brotherhood of Steel even have on the battle against the Unity is Vree giving a copy of her mutant autopsy report to the Vault Dweller. They don't even give you power armor! You have to work out an off the books deal with a knight in the repair shop and steal a part from the quartermaster or Rhombus to fix a suit.

And yet, who get to be the poster boys who appear in every single game? The cowards with more weapons and armor than anyone else who refuse to storm the facility where the mutants are being created, or the rag tag group of punks who join up to fight Nightkin with spears?

[afloweroutofstone]

how many fucked up backdoor/corrupt deals and undemocratic changes to internal rules do you think congress members are making, either because because they're in power and can get away with it, or because they know can slip past watchdogs with them. like not just the unprecedented amount of corrupt policy shifts and contracts, but the sheer levels of the uncharted corruption of Congress' structure in its stronger retriangulation towards a handful of corporations and speculation. In other words, how wrecked will Congress' internal functioning be afterwards?

The biggest problem right now isn’t in the legislature, it’s in the executive. Congress has mostly just been inactive during the Trump 2.0 era, they have passed a historically small number of bills and have repeatedly failed to act on a lot important issues, even some of those considered Republican priorities. Congress will emerge from all of this weaker relative to the other branches of government, but not deeply broken in any way that it wasn’t already broken before.

But the executive branch? The White House and the agencies? It might take decades to recover from what has happened to them since the start of last year. Basically the entire administrative and regulatory state has changed, and almost all of the changes have been bad. That worries me much more than Congress’ paralyzed obsequience.

[soup--champ]

"He's real, Kris. They all are. It... wouldn't make any sense if he's not."

[hemipenal-system]

chronically depressed pokemon trainer and the absol that she didn't pick but she just has because it showed up one time

[hemipenal-system]

she keeps it around because she recognizes it’s probably good for her long-term, and her therapist agrees, but it is very annoying to have a fluffy creature in your house that constantly inconveniences you by messing up plans you haven’t even made yet. she comes home from work and she can’t cook dinner because all the kitchen knives are gone. she wakes up in the morning and all the non-essential pills are missing from the medicine cabinet. her car’s gas is siphoned sometimes. how the fuck does a pokemon even learn to siphon a car’s gas tank? but she’s still here and she’s slowly making it day by day and things, verrrrrry slowly, are getting better

[human-soul-and-parts]

Seam + Noelle: Dark, Darker yet Darker

[vvvermw]

role swap designs i made lol. this took way too long. and also my thoughts here too

[chellustrates]

been a minute but i missed my little guy

[mihri-the-sasscatte]

Size comparison of Y’gathok, the Ceaseless Hunger and Bjorn, our level 20 Goliath Barbarian.

[professorsparklepants]

Hey quick question: why the FUCK do you have that

[kittyopteryx]

Imagine, from out of nowhere, your dm casually slapping this thing down on the table like any other encounter.

[mooretimetoplay]

“Yeah, the fight will start in a sec, uh…I’ll give inspiration to whomever helps me get this fucking box out of my car.”

[necrowemancer]

https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/7asxci/oc_ygathok_the_ceaseless_hunger_final_boss_of_our/ This is the reveal of this ridiculousness during their game

[jelloapocalypse]

Please watch this reveal video it’s kickass

[creepsandcrawlers]

FUCK ME  the reveal video

[threefeline]

“CHRIS??????”

[tanoraqui]

“Um, I don’t think our plan is gonna work.”

[8bitmickey]

[island-delver-go]

Always reblog Y'gathok

[robot-roadtrip-rants]

always ALWAYS reblog Y'gathok!