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12:12 AM
Hey. Hey, kid. Wanna buy signed comics? http://tesladyne.myshopify.com/products/atomic-robo-and-the-ring-of-fire-1-5-signed http://tesladyne.myshopify.com/products/the-everything-explodes-collection-signed http://tesladyne.myshopify.com/products/the-crystals-are-integral-collection-signed
 
@trogdor Yep, we even have "trash & treasure" markets in Australia (basically like a car boot sale, but usually not literally)
 
ah cool
sounds like it is more or less a widespread english-as-first-language thing
but not necessarily known anywhere where that isn't typically the case
 
12:35 AM
@Anaphory It's always time for more programming
@Shalvenay hello
@Anaphory perhaps "Data is in the eye of the beholder"?
 
@JoelHarmon hey there, how're things going?
 
suddenly much better, now that I've just seen that picture :)
 
@JoelHarmon xD alright here, how'd getting stuff wrapped up go yesterday?
 
pretty well
still have another room to paint, so much of the stuff I own is getting tetris'd regularly
how have you been, @Shalvenay
 
12:50 AM
@JoelHarmon doing alright -- xD at the description of the stuff-shuffle that is interior painting
now a good time for you?
 
sure
 
@JoelHarmon to the NAB then to avoid cluttering up here?
 
I have started to learn some code myself
it's pretty exciting
 
@trogdor oh? what language?
 
seems it's "HTML 5 and CSS"
 
12:55 AM
certainly useful skills
 
Very diplomatic of you.
 
@trogdor ah, figuring out the client first :p
 
like I said, I only just started
 
@trogdor is the serverside in the plan as well?
 
technically about two days ago
@Shalvenay I am learning it via a site while at work in my office
all I have learned so far are commands in the lagnguage/s
stuff like adding in an image <img> a <style> closing a tag </h1>
I am learning it alongside website building off of a site for it as well though
and they mesh in a weird way
I am not sure if that is a normal thing or not
 
1:02 AM
@trogdor That's normal.
 
@Miniman agreed; it also dovetails nicely into JavaScript
 
@JoelHarmon Yeah, I was about to mention that.
 
ok
that is reassuring XD
 
@trogdor The entanglement of HTML, CSS, and Javascript is responsible for most of what you see on the web.
 
@Miniman fair enough
on one hand, it seems easy enough, on the other, there are a ton of things to remember and it demands exact precision
like, slightly more exact than I imagined before starting XD
 
1:09 AM
@trogdor You may find this useful for testing purposes.
 
@Miniman I don't mind having an extra thing I can use, but for the moment I have plenty to practice on
I am learning this at work, and the program we have set up for it is working well for me at least so far
 
@trogdor Just thought I'd mention it - I mostly like it because it's quicker than saving and opening a browser every time I want to look at something.
 
@Miniman I did just send myself that URL to bookmark on my home laptop though
it seems like it could be useful at some point
 
@trogdor you should also eventually familiarize yourself with the developer tools in your browser of choice
 
Especially if that browser is Firefox :)
 
1:19 AM
ok
good to know
 
it'll have a JavaScript console in it, which is a great place to start small. You'll quickly outgrow it for pure development, though
 
technically, I use Chrome mostly at work, and Firefox mostly at home XD
 
@Miniman Chrome & even IE have reasonable devtools, either natively or as a plugin
 
@Adeptus Yep! But they're outclassed by Firebug.
 
I've just been making changes to an old Classic ASP web app, that only works in IE, in compatibility mode. Worked out a lot of my problems when I realised the version in source control bore little resemblance to the version on the actual site.
 
1:32 AM
@Adeptus Ah, been there.
 
Ouch.
 
@Adeptus yuck :/
 
I keep running into the fact that I did basically everything right, except that a period or quotation mark or something along those lines was missing, or in the wrong place
other than when I need to re-check a thing to see how it works again
but that is less frustrating for me XD
 
@trogdor Yeah. All programming languages will complain about those things. If you have an editor with syntax highlighting, that can help you spot that sort of mistake more easily.
 
get a decent syntax highlighter
 
1:40 AM
double recommendation eh?
XD
 
it's seriously important
 
fair enough
 
These catfish were so small they were more like kittenfish. https://t.co/6AcDzmNtlB
 
 
1 hour later…
2:56 AM
@JoelHarmon this, @trogdor
 
Sorry, what?
 
Sorry, I'm trying to "third" your recommendation of syntax highlighting to trogdor.
 
oh, great!
(though technically I was the second, it's still important)
 
hey there @nitsua60
 
@Shalvenay hiya
 
2:59 AM
lol
 
@trogdor does Guam have any electoral votes?
 
@nitsua60 how're things going? missed ya last night btw
 
@nitsua60 no, we do not
 
I don't think Puerto Rico does, either, not being a state and all
 
@Shalvenay Sorry--I fell asleep putting my daughter to sleep. Or, I guess she fell asleep putting me to sleep?
 
3:08 AM
@nitsua60 hahaha :p now a good time?
 
@JoelHarmon No, but they do get one of those unusual non-voting members of the House =\
 
@nitsua60 We've got one of those too!
 
@Shalvenay Sorry--heading off in about ten minutes. Thursday (i.e. tomorrow), if WE doesn't run?
 
yeah
 
@nitsua60 righty
 
3:09 AM
we get to not-vote all the time
 
@BESW @trogdor cool--committee memberships!
 
I mean, it is almost cool that we have a congressperson, but without any voting power it still means nothing
it's kinda sad
 
@trogdor eh, I'm not sure my congressperson's votes means that much. I'm not trying to downplay the difference between "the same representation every other state resident gets" and "no representtion," but it's my impression that committee work can have a rather larger impact than floor votes.
 
@nitsua60 It's definitely observable that our congressperson's ability to get things done drops dramatically every time a new person is elected and all the connections with other members of Congress have to be re-forged.
 
It looks like Rep. Bordallo's got House Armed Services, which has got to be huge for you guys, right? And she's got a half-dozen terms' seniority.
 
3:21 AM
Yeah, she's done a pretty good job.
I kinda wish Underwood had stayed in, but he ran for governor one election cycle instead (and lost).
 
the problem is, she won't live forever
 
I'm on her website and thought "wow, the capitol of Guam looks a lot like the US Capitol." Then I realized....
 
@BESW My understanding of American congressional positions is many of them are based on seniority. Thus it may be more beneficial to keep someone in office you don't like, because you might be better off influencing a committee chair than a freshman representative
 
then someone else will have to build everything up from the ground up again
it would at least be nice to have a vote XD
 
@JoelHarmon Certainly in CT we felt like we had an outsized "presence" for many years with both Dodd and Lieberman being in the Senate two and three decades.
(Nothing like how ME felt with Collins and Snow in there, both roundly "swing" votes and both with lots of tenure.)
I know plenty of people who despised most things they stood for but still voted for them... "we've got committee chairmanships at stake."
</politics>
Night, all.
 
3:27 AM
'Night, Nitsua
 
night
 
Probably the most galling bit is the reason why we don't have any national voting rights.
In 1901 a Supreme Court ruling declared that the US territories were inhabited by "alien races" who differed "in religion, customs, laws, methods of taxation and modes of thought" so much that "the administration of government and justice, according to Anglo-Saxon principles, may for a time be impossible."
 
that "alien races" bit is especially bad
 
It went on to say that the Constitution didn't prohibit the Federal government from making "large concessions" (ie, not giving those "alien races" full rights as citizens) "for a time, that, ultimately, our own theories may be carried out, and the blessings of a free government under the Constitution extended to them."
 
they had a certain point with difference in customs,... but religion here has been pretty dang catholic, and the US made a lot of laws for us
 
3:36 AM
So, Chamorros don't have the federal vote because it's a blessing they don't have the culture to understand properly, but if they're governed without representation for long enough they'll learn about the Anglo-Saxon principles of democratic representation and then they can get the vote.
 
I'm going to make an assumption about the census of 1900 Guam here: technically, they were also right in that it was composed of "alien races", I.E. "foreign ethnicities"
(I'm assuming it was still predominantly native islander at that point, but I fully admit ignorance about it then as well as now)
 
It's still predominantly inhabited by Pacific peoples.
 
I figured, but for very provable things I don't know about, I prefer to hedge my bets
 
@JoelHarmon I only take issue with that term for it
it implies that because of their "race" they are incapable of learning stuff about "western" culture
 
I understand that; I'm perhaps doing a poor job of pointing out that the definitions of words shift over time, and doubly so their undertones
 
3:39 AM
@JoelHarmon yeah that is fair
 
But for values of "differing in religion, customs, laws, ...and modes of thought," let me laugh hollowly. In 1901 Chamorros were Catholics who were fluent in Spanish and/or English, and had been subject to a succession of Spanish and American governance for several hundred years already.
 
but the problem is, they never bothered to revise that
not in any significant enough way at least
@BESW exactly
 
IIRC, there remains court precedent in the US to try someone as a witch and summarily execute them.
 
plus, even at least 40 some years AFTER that, Guam still had a US ADMIRAL as it's APPOINTED governor
no votes on that for the people living here
 
We're 115 years into the temporary withholding of full citizens' rights from a people for reasons that were demonstrably false even at the time.
 
3:42 AM
so implying that Guam didn't have a similar kind of law system,... was only technically true because no one in the mainland States had to live under an appointed military State leader
 
quite ironic
 
this is of course ignoring the time in which Guam was being held by Japan during WWII
(IE, obviously we didn't still have an Admiralty governor during that time XD)
 
That the Insular Cases majority statement was written by a raging racist is unquestioned; that even HE thought the revocation of privilege should be temporary is nothing less than astonishing! But the Insular Cases are still the shoal on which Guam's political status has foundered.
 
(Not a US Admiralty, anyway)
 
@JoelHarmon yes, true, XD
 
3:46 AM
(And Puerto Rico's, and American Samoa's...)
 
then again, maybe it was considered by some to be a government in exile/absentia, much the way France had in WWII
I admit I'm not much of a political history buff
 
Japan still felt the need to govern Guam via their Navy, ignoring all the things Japan did wrong by Guam during that time, I can certainly see good reason for Navy governance over a newly captured territory during a time of war
and now Japan is still the biggest contributor to tourism here
as ironic as that can sound
 
3:59 AM
0
Q: Should this question be deleted?

nitsua60This question was asked, answered, then largely edited. Now the original question wasn't great and got closed for reasons-I-can't-remember. But it was answered in good faith, and that good-faith answer now no longer addresses the (new) question. If the answerer were to delete their answer my und...

 
 
1 hour later…
5:05 AM
M'rr. I didn't expect it to be easy researching the Waccamaw, but this is getting ridiculous.
Still, the very difficulty of it is an example of why my player wants to do this.
 
mm
 
Even when I was living a few miles from Dog Bluff I was hardly aware of their presence.
 
why is that?
or why was that anyway
 
Well, partly because I was kinda uninterested in looking outward at the community around my college, that's on me.
 
ah
fair enough,I am guilty of that sometimes myself
 
5:12 AM
But there's very very little attention paid to the First Peoples living in that area: mentions of them are almost always in a historical context, not as a contemporary community.
This is common across the country. The idea that NDNs are a contemporary community is present mostly only among people who live near a visible territory (read: has a casino).
So I can find a decent amount about the Waccamaw as a historical peoples, but nothing about their contemporary condition, opinions, or positions more granular than the largest legal battles they've participated in.
My current thrust of research is NDN blogs.
 
5:41 AM
NDN can mean: NDN (gene) Named Data Networking, a NSF funded future internet architecture research project New Democrat Network, a political organization in the United States Nigel Desmond Norman, British aircraft designer, his company NDN Aircraft, and their products: NDN Firecracker NDN Fieldmaster Shorthand spelling for Indian, a term that some Native Americans in the United States use to refer to themselves Necromancer's DOS Navigator, an orthodox file manager for DOS Northern Distribution Network, part of NATO logistics in the Afghan War...
TIL
 
It's not perfect, but so far as I can tell of all the terms to use for the First Peoples it's probably the most likely to elicit "Well, he tried and didn't get it wrong" from most people who are in a position to have opinions on it.
The Waccamaw of Conway/Aynor themselves seem to use "Indian," but I'm not about to adopt that one outside of specifically quoting them.
Most options are either specific to particular groups or have deeply problematic connotations.
 
 
1 hour later…
user61230
7:07 AM
"Wolf!" the boy cried, and people came to see why. But fewer came every time, until everyone was used to seeing me. Except that boy. Bigot.
 
8:00 AM
lol
 
 
1 hour later…
9:29 AM
@Anaphory [wave] Were you the one who was asking about Bubblegumshoe last night?
 
No, I was the one to jump into that conversation!
 
'cause there's one last thing I should've mentioned: BGS has a section on "GMing without a net," which may be more to your (or whoever's) liking.
 
As in Play Unsafe, Don't Prep Too Much?
 
> If you decide to build the adventure on the fly, you still need a strong opening scene and an idea for a logical next scene. From there, enlist your players’ help. Listen to them as they offer theories and make suggestions about where to go next. Nudge them a bit if they start thrashing about because either they don’t have enough information, have too many options, or can’t settle on a plan because of the risks. Use their Drives to scoot them onward....
The key risk here is anticlimax: the Sleuths have worked hard to solve the problem, only to find that the villain folds when first confro
 
10:03 AM
so I'm taking in suggestions for a character in an upcoming game
anyone interested in assisting me with that Fate chargen?
oh
I-I'll be in the Fate room...
 
[was reading Harriet the Invincible]
 
10:54 AM
I just tried to write a small thing in Scala instead of Java and it's so cool I could not resist going here and telling you!!
 
Grats!
 
11:25 AM
IT'S SO MUCH NICER!
Like, you can do def l(tree: Tree) = tree.map(n=>n.length).sum in one expression instead of public double l(Tree tree) { double sum = 0; for(Node n: tree) { sum += n.length; } return sum; } and it has list comprehensions and currying and higher-order functions, AND I CAN STILL JUST IMPORT ALL THE JAVA CORE OF THE APP I'M EXTENDING!
 
 
6 hours later…
5:54 PM
Good <insert time of day> :)
 
6:20 PM
Hey
 
6:30 PM
I have new books, yay =)
 
6:44 PM
(Dresden Files RPG)
 
Ah cool
I'm waiting for them to finish the FAE Dresden Files
 
7:16 PM
I have a game on the tip of my tongue. Colonize planets going against aliens, just two kinds of rolls, the name of the game is or includes the number of your batallion and of your squad (1-3 or something like that)
Anyone recognizes it?
 
7:29 PM
sorry, no
 
8:24 PM
Found it thanks to a guy who asked some friends. 3:16 carnage amongst the stars
 
 
1 hour later…
9:28 PM
0
Q: Voting down has to be revised

Baskakov_DmitriyQuoting the official description of downvoting priveledge: Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect. There is nothing like "Because I have a different opinion" on the list, and al...

 
10:16 PM
@TheOracle -1 "Does not show any research effort." Also, duplicate.
@NiekBergman Cool! DFRPG was my introduction to Fate.
 
10:30 PM
lol
@BESW it doesn't know any better
 
10:46 PM
hey there @nitsua60
 
Aaand now I'm being called out for egoism because I took the time to respond instead of just voting and moving on.
 
11:12 PM
If I'm wrong, tell me I'm wrong. I'm wrong a lot. But try to assume incompetence before malice.
 
wow
 
ugh
 
If his first response to people disagreeing with or misunderstanding his posts is personal attacks, meta.se is gonna chew him up and spit him out.
 
@BESW no kidding
 
@BESW Eh, he's suggesting a massive rework to the voting system. Meta.SE would have chewed him up and spat him out anyway.
 
11:26 PM
@Miniman Yet another reason I'm skeptical he's done the research, or he'd have (a) posted on meta.se instead of a backwater Stack, and (b) been aware of the kind of response he'd be likely to get.
(I mean, really. If you've read the meta.se material and then come to rpg.meta.se to propose your new system, wut.)
 
Well:
> it's just 18 posts
There are 479 posts in the downvotes tag on meta.SE, so that's a warning sign right there.
 
Even when I pared it down to [down-votes] + [comments] + [feature-request], that's 40 questions.
 
Yeah - my immediate guess was that they were confused and talking about RPG meta, but we only have 10 posts in the downvotes tag, so...???
Average score of posts by tag. Downvotes did better than expected, but private messaging is right where it belongs.
Highest average on main is the , for obvious reasons.
 
11:42 PM
<sarc><rant>Man, that BESW's really getting on my nerves. Such a show-off, always helping people, with information, even!</rant></sarc>
@Shalvenay hiya
 
Ugh, forgot to multiply by 1. Gah.
 
@BESW Well, you're wrong about this: "I'm wrong a lot."
 
Oooh, snap.
 
@nitsua60 Somewhere, a robot's head just exploded.
 
That's usually what happens on day 1 of my robotics team's season, when someone mistakes a red wire for a black one =\
 
11:45 PM
@nitsua60 I wish that was an actual command
XD
 
@trogdor You mean the <sarc> tag?
 
@Miniman yes, also the rant one
to be fair, it could be one I just have not learned yet
but as far as I know it is not XD
 
@nitsua60 And thank you, but I'm not sure having people rushing to my defense is productive. It'd be better to maybe guide him a little yourself, eg to the fact that he seems to be drastically underestimating the extent of the discussion.
 
@trogdor The problem is, even if they were actual tags, what would they look like when rendered? Because if you could get everyone to agree on formatting for things like sarcasm, we wouldn't need a tag.
 
Irony punctuation is any proposed form of notation used to denote irony or sarcasm in text. Written English lacks a standard way to mark irony, and several forms of punctuation have been proposed. Among the oldest and most frequently attested are the percontation point proposed by English printer Henry Denham in the 1580s, and the irony mark, used by Marcellin Jobard and French poet Alcanter de Brahm during the 19th century. Both marks take the form of a reversed question mark, "βΈ®". Irony punctuation is primarily used to indicate that a sentence should be understood at a second level. A bracketed...
 
11:48 PM
@Miniman this is a fair point
as is, you could just easily make a <p> put your sarcastic rant here </p>
 
@BESW better?
 
maybe there is even a lorem ipsum for sarcastic rant giberish XD
 
Aye.
I should be able to sink or swim on my own merits; whether or not I have a fan club is irrelephant.
 
@trogdor You mean this?
 
@Miniman Yeah, we should train an ELIZA chatbot on that, so as to be able to generate rant-on-demand.
 
11:54 PM
@Miniman Har HAr
 
[cough] GLANTHbots will be summarily chat-banned.
 
good
I don't feel we need those
 

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