TRPG General Chat

Rubiksmoose

00:07

I remember that!

nitsua60

00:56

@DavidCoffron Back when I used to answer questions =)

KorvinStarmast

01:35

@Rubiksmoose SF&F is rampant with comment streams that look like reddit. History beta is for the most part a lost cause, though the mods there try their best. The community are utterly undisciplined.

Aviation has a similar problem, though there are a few people who do try to work on the clutter ... sometimes.

Without the community buying into the premise, it won't work. Christinity.SE is uneven, and I think a few of the people who used to work from the community mod angle to keep things tidy have moved on to other things. I typically have 3-5 times as many action items when I drop in there for a quick look, in terms of community mod action, as I ever do here.

some days it's a dozen

Joshua

01:48

I might be willing to do something about Christianity.SE

Shalvenay

@KorvinStarmast DIY is pretty so-so re: comment usage as well

Rubiksmoose

can we undelete this question? rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/143103/…

It is valid and the OP only deleted after they got an answer (but before it could get an upvote).

Joshua

@Rubiksmoose: Too bad I can't see it.

Rubiksmoose

ah yeah, rep locked (10k rep I think?)

CTWind

Got my vote.

BESW

01:52

> Welcome to rpg.se! Please take a look at the [tour], it's a useful introduction to the site. Titles, while useful summaries for questions, do not replace the question itself. Please [edit] your question to describe the problem or challenge you're facing.

Joshua

Well I'll never get to 10k on rpg

Rubiksmoose

@BESW yeah that is definitely an issue that needs to be address if (when) it gets undeleted

(since I can't comment on delted stuff)

Joshua

That's probably why he deleted it in the first place; got answer and thinks it's not worth the effort to fix

Rubiksmoose

Which is not a valid reason to delete of course.

but the person is new, they can't be expected to know that necessarily

Shalvenay

@Joshua I wouldn't say "never"

Joshua

01:55

on the other hand, if it's not fixed it attracts downvotes he doesn't want or need

My friend: Nerf war!
Me: Beware the relavisitic Nerf gun.
My friend: I quit.

Rubiksmoose

@Joshua Things like that get fixed pretty quickly here

BESW

Alternately: ask the question again yourself and encourage the answerer to re-post.

Joshua

As you know Shalvenay I think about RPGs really very differently than just about everybody else here.

Rubiksmoose

Now that I looks again, it is possible that they may have been rethinking actually what they were asking.

Since the last edit completely removed large major chunks of the question.

@BESW Yeah I'll see what happens and if it is worth it (probably not)

Oh the stack is so weird about which actions it will let you undo and which it won't

Shalvenay

@Joshua hehehe, maybe not too differently :) besides, we're a pretty big tent as far as a community goes :)

KorvinStarmast

02:07

@Rubiksmoose done as requested

@Joshua That's a good thing, Joshua.

Joshua

@KorvinStar: One of my friends said that if he ever encountered one of my characters in the same game, he would make it his business to get off the material plane as fast as possible.

KorvinStarmast

@Joshua so long as he's sold most of his possessions ahead of time, perhaps not a bad plan. Material plane seems to attract a lot of monsters and murderhobos

Max

What’s something a scientist in the Star Wars galaxy can be working on in the canon New Republic?

Joshua

Hyperdrive navagation

Avoiding gravity shadows detected in flight

Max

I think they have that already

Joshua

02:13

Not a very good one

I decided I do not like the magical definition of telling the truth very much. It's too literal minded to comprehend "might as well be true" or "simplification".

Shalvenay

02:28

@Joshua oh LOL. the "You Can't Handle The Truth" edition of zone of truth

MikeQ

@Joshua Which definition are you referring to?

Joshua

I haven't encountered one that doesn't insist on the literal truth yet.

Shalvenay

hey there @Max, welcome to the RPG.SE lair :)

BESW

03:01

Hours ago, the Draconis Navigation Bureau detected a large object drifting in from deep space. Pilots: Investigate the object's size, speed, nature, and trajectory and report back. Those Who Were Here Before. A campaign framework for Tachyon Squadron. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?keywords=tachyon&manufacturers_id=2152&affiliate_id=24139

Tweeted by EvilHatOfficial on March 13, 2019 at 4:35 PM

Ben

Afternoon all

Lunchtime for me. Got nothing to do so I'm getting paid to relax. Not gonna complain about that

KorvinStarmast

I'd like to visit, Ben, but the Lord of Terror walks the earth yet again. no, wait, that's my dog and he needs to get rid of some dog chow.

Ciao

Ben

@KorvinStarmast The next dog I get is going to be named that, and he will be the loveliest pupper you ever did meet haha

V2Blast

looks like our Planeslip stream this week will be a low-key one, where we design our Spelljammer ship

Shalvenay

@V2Blast as long as you don't subsequently take a wrong turn at the outer planet and end up marooned in J105934 :P

V2Blast

03:16

also I read through all the chat stuff I missed and the diamond-mods' comments in that StackOverflow thread bother me so much

also I dunno if this is worth suggesting, regarding the rules-as-written tag, but... maybe renaming it would be clearer? something like [literal-rules-readings] (with the current name as a synonym of that)?

because [rules-as-written] as a tag name is easily misinterpreted, especially by those who don't bother reading the tag wiki

Shalvenay

@V2Blast you are not the first person to have come to that conclusion; unfortunately, nobody's come up with a foolproof replacement

V2Blast

is it brought up in one of the many meta threads about the tag? 👀

trogdor

At the very least it's been debated several times in this chat

And I could swear I remember half a dozen people saying they would post something on meta about it

That being said I have no idea what it ultimately came to

Joshua

If the master has a pet lich, how powerful is the master?

Ben

Insane Taekwondo stunts in 4K Slow Motion

►

I'm a little bit obsessed with the Slow Mo Guys haha

V2Blast

03:30

I watch all the Achievement Hunter videos but never remember to watch the Slow Mo Guys stuff

Ben

@V2Blast Good Ol' Gav

He's such a dork in all the AH videos, but when you watch the Slow Mo Guys vids, he certainly know what he's talking about

V2Blast

03:58

@Ben Haha, yeah, it's a very different dynamic

he knows his slow mo

anyway... Planeslip time ;)

twitch.tv/bigdredwun

Ben

@V2Blast Are you starting soon?

V2Blast

ye

in a few minutes

Ben

I can watch :D

V2Blast

nice nice

we'll probably just be designing our spelljamming ship ;)

linksassin

05:02

@Xirema @V2Blast Just scrolled up to see that Stack Overflow thread. Wow, I want to flag it but the people who would respond to it are the problem. That is just such a terrible attitude. I find myself having the same arguement on writing.se at the moment. So glad for the standard of moderation on rpg.se!

Ben

@linksassin Is this the "answering in the comments"?

linksassin

@Ben yeah

I had to make this question on writing meta so that I could have something solid to link to

Even then a bunch of high rep users chimed in with "I think this is fine" or "We shouldn't do this but I do it anyway"

Ben

Even just comparing those two... Yeesh

@Rubiksmoose I feel like there should be comment about "don't delete your question", but I can't really word it properly. Like, "It's not a bad question", or "you shouldn't delete it if you don't like the answer".

I would default to the first one

linksassin

@Ben @Rubiksmoose how about: "This is a good question that could help people other users. If you have received an answer you like accept it, otherwise [edit] or leave a comment explaining what you think is missing from the current answer(s). We usually only delete bad or abandoned questions, if you wish to discuss it you are welcome in Role-playing Games Meta or [chat] anytime."

Ben

05:18

I like it :)

Ben

05:48

How I see myself when playing a bard in D&D

►

trogdor

That's what 4e warlord looked like

BESW

Except you could also replace the right-hand image with reversed footage of someone getting seriously injured.

Ben

So... they would... sing them better?

BESW

06:07

Well, warlords would probably just shout. But yes.

Our warlord liked to roleplay his healing power as "RUB SOME DIRT IN IT AND GET OVER YOURSELF!"

Ben

That's exactly how I imagined it lol

BESW

It was a great lesson in (a) "martial" does not mean "non-fantastical" and (b) hit points are really super leaky abstractions.

Ben

I think I remember a story about a player that played a Paladin that way. They were old ang grubby, and really rude, and whenever they used "lay on hands" they would just yell at the other PCs

He told everyone he was a fighter too, which was a big part of the apparent issue everyone had with it

trogdor

@Ben more like yell them better

I personally found it rather fun and even hilarious when my character got dropped by something and was roused. Simply because the angry dragonborn in our party yelled angrily about not putting full effort into the fight

Especially because he didn't ever do anything other than yell at us

It was great

Though I can see why that kind of character could make someone mad

Miniman

06:27

@Ben Yeah, that one's an OMH-type story, where group dysfunction is presented as being awesome and desirable.

BESW

trogdor

There was a time, especially early on, when I was way more invested in nothing bad happening to the character I was playing

And I could see that translating into being mad about another players,... Character dissonance?

Ben

@BESW appropriate

@Miniman I can agree that the idea of it is kinda cool, but in practice, not so much

kviiri

I think as a whole, the hobby puts a lot of unnecessary emphasis on the idea of setting up an awesome payoff through several sessions of miserable time

Or not necessarily miserable, but possibly lesser kinds of badness anyway

GMs and players set up dramatic twists and plan years-long megacampaigns

Miniman

@Ben I mean, the "mechanically a paladin but described as a grumpy old man" part would be fine as an example of a) mundanes are awesome and b) mechanics don't have to drive story. The problem was that it wasn't presented as either of those things, it was presented as "this guy was unfun to play with but it's awesome because he was only doing it so that he could eventually surprise us with a big twist".

I'm leaving out the "and this makes him better than us", because, well...yikes.

Ben

06:39

@Miniman Yeah. that part was just "uhh… ok?"

Miniman

Full credit for me even having this lens to see it through goes to this chat, btw.

Ben

You can still be "grumpy" without being degrading, too

Miniman

(Which as always mostly means BESW)

kviiri

It's even worse because a short story like that quite easily justifies its bad stuff with a good ending. So if one doesn't think about it too much, it's easy to relate to "ooh that's so awesome".

But in real life, assuming that was played out as described, we're talking about something like dozens of hours of bad time.

Ben

Yeah. Just hand-waving months worth of toxic behaviours, bad group dynamics etc because he came up with a cool trick.

V2Blast

06:48

are we talking about that 4chan greentext

Miniman

@V2Blast Probably? Not sure what greentext means here.

Ben

I believe so

"anon does" stories

Or same format, at least

the Sir Bearington sotry

V2Blast

it's the nickname for a style of storytelling on 4chan, that uses the format:
> be me
> play D&D

etc.

See /r/dndgreentext

Ben

Yeah

Anon does IT is a great one.

"update Adobe Reader and restart PC"

V2Blast

7

Q: Help me re-find this role-playing story

I want to find this story again to inspire my fellow newer players to break the mold of role-playing. I remember reading an incredibly inspiring [D&D probably] story about a player who was role-playing a Paladin "in disguise" as an awful lazy crotchety fighter so well, that the players thought h...

there you go

kviiri

06:56

Interestingly, the imperative mood and > as a "prompt" make greentexts similar to some old text adventure games.

Miniman

@kviiri Well, look similar, anyway.

kviiri

Winter was supposed to end two weeks ago but lo! Fresh snow

The Oracle

0

Q: Are Tag Criteria Prescriptive or Descriptive?

Which of the following is true: Tag criteria are prescriptive; one reads the criteria of a tag and checks whether they apply to the question; tag criteria change through meta discussions and/or wiki edits. Tag criteria are descriptive; one watches how authors use tags, and edits the wiki to ma...

discussion tags policy

Ben

Winter isn't supposed to come until april.

April 14, more specifically

[starts humming the GoT theme]

kviiri

A colleague of mine reported that especially in the formerly-socialist parts of Germany, it's quite common for landlords to turn on the heating on a given date --- regardless of the actual weather conditions.

Student housing is pretty good at doing that too, but luckily about half of my net worth is in sweaters

The other half is blankets, quilts and woolen socks.

Ben

07:12

Come to Australia, where the coldest it gets is like... -2

vicky_molokh

Everyone specs frost mages, Australia specs poisonmancer . . .

kviiri

Aww, a bunch of kids boarded the bus and they're adorably sweet

And it started snowing more!

Ben

Because of the adorably sweet kids?

[Squints eyes questioningly]

kviiri

@Ben Correlation implying causation, yes.

I should take this bus to work more often, the scenery is a lot nicer than the train I usually take.

Miniman

@Ben In Queensland, maybe.

Ben

07:24

@Miniman Queensland doesn't drop below double digits.

Maybe only occasionally haha

Ben

07:37

Either way, it doesn't get cold enough for people to say that "Minus 2 is a nice day"

kviiri

08:55

We discussed eyeballable units earlier, it's kinda fun how oftentimes it's easy to get a rough estimate of how cold it is out by just looking.

The wind is quite obvious (yes, I know it doesn't really make the air colder, but the effect is equivalent to having actually colder air), but also clouds (clear days in the winter tend to be colder than overcast days), what shape the snow is in, what things are dry and what are wet

BESW

I've got a friend who, while living in California, had people actually think that "being able to tell the weather by standing outside" was a Magical Native Skill.

Ben

>Opens the door and steps outside
> Steps back inside, drenched
> "It's raining"

BESW

09:11

kviiri

09:39

@Ben Haha

The Oracle

10:00

0

Q: What is the policy about link targeting locked content?

This question references https://www.dndbeyond.com/, which is an official WoTC website. The problem we face with this content is that it is not accessible without a twitch account (afaik). This defeat a huge part of this stack exchange. We could avoid this website but since it is seen as offic...

discussion hyperlinks

trogdor

10:44

@BESW wow,...

BESW

@trogdor I mean, for a lot of people the idea that indigenous people still exist in America is mind-blowing.

trogdor

that's pretty sad

vicky_molokh

@BESW That's odd, given that they're quite prominent in various works of modern culture coming from North America.

BESW

As modern people you'd meet on the street? Johnny Depp being a Pretendian in an actual museum exhibit doesn't count.

vicky_molokh

11:00

Yes, as modern people on the street. They seem very definitely present in depictions of modern North America, such as in CSI or Renegade, or in RPG books.

Not ubiquitous of course, but not unheard of either.

BESW

[squint] Did you just cite a TV show that got cancelled 22 years ago as a contemporary example of Natives in popular media?

vicky_molokh

Modernity began in about 90-100 years ago, right?

BESW

That's... a very specific use of social sciences jargon in a conversation that's not about the social sciences.

vicky_molokh

But yeah, I do think of CSI and Renegade as relatively modern - one of them is from the 80s and the other is younger than me. Or how about Mentalist. Or the Monster Hunters tabletop RPG line.

BESW

If we're talking about how media influences our contemporary understanding of the world, then media which actually influences contemporary understanding would be appropriate to cite.

You could, for example, have mentioned the Twilight franchise which attempts to depict a modern Native tribe but fails spectacularly at portraying them as an actual real-life identity by reducing them to a supernatural foil for an obviously fictional premise.

vicky_molokh

11:08

Well, isn't CSI pretty influential? And (checking wiki) the oldest of the series lasted until 2015, which is pretty recent.

I'm just very puzzled by your mention of people who think that all of the first nations died by today. That seems so odd given that they're present in media coming from your continent.

BESW

Then ask about why I say it, rather than telling me I'm wrong by citing obscure decades-old media I'd never even heard of before as if that somehow proves a point.

Or google it for yourself and find an indigenous perspective on the subject.

vicky_molokh

Okay, asking differently: how did people manage to never encounter a depiction in the media, or did but assumed (without ever checking) that the depiction takes zero inspiration from contemporary living people? That seems rather mind-boggling.

BESW

I never said that.

I said that people are surprised when confronted with the idea that indigenous peoples still exist in America. That's not the same as people honestly thinking there are no indigenous peoples still living in America--though some do think that as well, for a variety of reasons.

vicky_molokh

I mean, just watching TV about the (say, post-2000s) world, encountering an explicit member of the first nations seems much more likely than encountering an explicit rusyn or even belarusian.

> That's not the same as people honestly thinking there are no

BESW

The key lies, broadly, in framing and erasure.

vicky_molokh

11:15

OK, I seem to have trouble seeing those two as that different.

BESW

It starts with historical education, which almost always frames First Nations in the past tense; we learn about first contacts but round about the Trail of Tears most references to indigenous peoples dry up and discussions of expansion and Manifest Destiny are framed as "settling" (not invading) empty land.

And modern depictions of First Nations peoples tend to reinforce that "dying out or already gone" presentation, as a subset of the Colored Pain narrative. Natives are often portrayed by non-Native actors (one of the most famous portrayers of Native American characters in TV history was an Italian man) and presented as incidental or exotic.

vicky_molokh

Official storybooks of a multinational state being rather quite on the matters of non-dominant nations seems pretty par for the course (I was born in USSR and caught a bit of that experience on the non-dominant side). But from consuming a bunch of USAian media, I always had the impression that in the public consciousness they take up a visible (though not necessarily accurate!) presence.

BESW

Thus, while most Americans if given a few moments to think about it will say "Yes of course there's Indians here," they will be extremely surprised to actually meet one because they don't actually think about it as a part of their current nation's demographic composition.

vicky_molokh

Ah, surprised as in 'this is statistically unlikely' rather than 'wait, they still live'. Now I got it.

BESW

No. Surprised to be reminded that they still live.

Because in our everyday lives, it's very tempting to forget that we're standing on stolen ground--and our media makes it easy to do that forgetting by mostly presenting Natives in easy-to-digest-and-forget ways.

That's one reason the Standing Rock protests were so disruptive.

Ben

11:29

@BESW "We're still here. no thanks to you guys"

BESW

@vicky_molokh Pay attention, next time, to how much the media presents First Tribes as modern nations with coherent social identities, rather than as individual Americans with a few exotic quirks. And then look at how many of Natives get to have their own stories rather than being tools in the stories about the white people.

Consider how often they cast a non-Native actor in the role, which (like acting cis actors in trans roles, or abled actors in disabled roles) sends the message that there are just so few of these people in the real world that you can't find one to hire.

vicky_molokh

Well, last I remember, they are presented as separate. E.g. in the Mentalist there's an exchange where a merchant is selling a feathered souvenir, and Jane asks him 'Don't you feel bad about mercantilising your legacy like that?' or the like, and the merchant replies 'Nah, these are X items, we are Y'.

BESW

Look at Westworld, which spent an entire episode of its second season showcasing almost all Native actors speaking a Native language (though not, for most of them, their own language)... and then remember all those characters are robots created to please human masters and go check how many actors playing actual humans are Native.

Yes, there is an increasing effort to be more responsible about these kinds of portrayals in media. But it's pushing against a lot of inertia and it's still very much a background thing.

Maybe watch Reel Injun and consider the ongoing debate within Native communities about the benefits and harms done by participating in bad representation.

At any rate, my point is that we are given motive and opportunity to conveniently forget that we are living on stolen land and the original occupants are still here, unassimilated and sovereign despite our society's best efforts.

And so, despite most of us technically knowing they're still here, many of us wind up being surprised and re-surprised when we're reminded of it in real life... because TV and the movies aren't real, so reminders there don't actually percolate into the same brainspace.

Just like I know people who watched Black Lightning but didn't realize all the social problems in the show are real and un-exaggerated, it's just the actual superpowers that are made up, despite being inundated with media about the physical and social violence visited on black Americans and their communities.

vicky_molokh

11:47

Well, the difference of brainspace . . . I suppose it's better to have people stay able to separate reality and fiction, though more interest in which fictions are inspired by reality is useful.

BESW

Humans are really good at ignoring things we don't like, and most Americans are made VERY uncomfortable by the notion of confronting things like the legacy of BQ.

vicky_molokh

Oh, humans are certainly good at that. OTOH, I suspect if they weren't, they'd go extinct as a species under the burden of mental strain of facing all the things they don't like.

BESW

(Blood quantum would be another reason people keep getting surprised that Natives are still around. Ick.)

vicky_molokh

Oh yeah, USAians with their Blood Quanta and One Drop Rules are weird.

But I suppose tying differences in legal treatments to nationality is prone to spawn effects like that.

BESW

(BQ is a measurement of Nativeness determined by how many of your ancestors were Native. It's not something any Native tribe came up with on their own; it was forced on them by white governments and its effect is to limit Native national sovereignty by limiting their nations' ability to enroll citizens, and over time to reduce the overall population of people the white governments have treaties with.)

(That Natives have their own sovereign nations is also a thing many people are surprised by. But also many don't because the conditons of being recognized as sovereign are determined by the occupying governments and tend to be almost impossible to meet for those nations which were hardest hit by relocation and slaughter.)

kviiri

11:55

The indigenous people around here (the Sami) are likewise quite often neglected, although their legal and cultural situation has improved a lot over the past decades with improving popular consciousness. However, there's some whole new kinds of tensions going on, often tying in messily with the urban vs rural -debates.

BESW

I live among an indigenous people who had their sovereignty denied by the United Nations because they were occupied by people who didn't ever treat them as sovereign, and that's what counts: if the occupying force ever deigned to at least pretend you were a nation.

(Not that that helped Hawai'i.)

kviiri

I wish US-based media (or heck, even non-US based) was more open about the fact that the US is a colonial power

BESW

@kviiri That reminds me, I should find out how that re-districting experiment is working out for the Spiritual Assemblies of that area.

kviiri

@BESW I facetiously regret to inform you, regarding the above, that you and troggy are no longer my only US colonial friends. I recently got in touch with someone from Puerto Rico

BESW

@kviiri Very cool!

kviiri

12:03

One thing that's sadly common outside the bigger cities is a blatant disregard of environmental regulations. They're often seen as a bureaucratic folly, imposed by the stupid city folk who don't realize that the river has been a perfectly good outlet for all kinds of filth for the last 1500 years or so. Except the amount and intensity of filth have exploded in severity, but hey, stupid city folk :(

BESW

(Usually the large-region Bahá'í administration structures are organized by national boundaries, but five or six years ago people were working on re-districting the Spiritual Assemblies of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, to better reflect what I understood to be a common cultural identity across the northern areas of all three nations and provide an administrative structure that made more sense that way.)

(I think the idea was basically to have a fourth Spiritual Assembly, for Sápmi.)

kviiri

It gets more divisive when native privilege gets invoked --- there was recently a case where professional Sami fishers knowingly disregarded fishing limitations, since they have by traditional law a right "since time immemorial" to fish in their own waters. It makes sense to a certain extent --- but modern day fishing methods are capable of wrecking river ecosystems, so some kind of regulation must be enforced.

@BESW Yes, the Sápmi region intersects all three countries, as well as the Kola peninsula (part of Russia)

I think it sounds like a very good idea

BESW

@kviiri Ah, yeah, I've seen that get played out in a lot of places. There's often an issue that the regulations are put in place without attempts to accommodate people whose lives they actually threaten.

Like Alaska Natives who go "Okay but what do we eat."

And often in the Pacific the scientific experts are actually missing massive pieces of the ecological puzzle that the locals are familiar with but can't phrase the way the scientists can hear it.

kviiri

My personal view is that traditional rights apply to traditional means

However, there's possibly other ways too.

BESW

I think I'm not positioned to have a view worth sharing.

I think that human dignity and the responsibility to curate our environment responsibly are both important values and that they aren't mutually incompatible but there's no one-size-fits-all solution and specific solutions need to be arrived at by people who are familiar with the reality of the situation and those whose dignity is at stake.

In every case, I am neither of those things.

kviiri

12:22

I think the long-term wise, although likely painful, move would be to just shift the burden of administering fishing to an agency appointed by the Sámi parliament.

BESW

I do feel like indigenous peoples should have truly sovereign governance over their areas, for so many reasons. (Within the context of an international body in which all nations participate equitably, also.)

Whenever that possibility comes up here, white folx freak about about how they'd get kicked out of their homes and I'm like "Probably not? But if so, that's fair."

vicky_molokh

That's a dilemma that I think isn't given all the nuance it deserves.

kviiri

It wouldn't be so bad, I mean, they're usually the same people who say "oh they don't have it so bad under our rule", why would it be any different in reverse

BESW

Oh, there's definitely nuance. But a key principle of effective reparations is that you'll never perfectly hit the "right amount" of repayment for injustice and so the only way to make reparations actually work is to over-compensate.

@kviiri It always seemed like projection to me, and/or a fear that the indigenous people have been assimilated so much they'll take on the same attitudes.

vicky_molokh

The main difficulty of the dilemma is that any attempts to provide compensation will inevitably hit innocents with punishment for their parents' sins.

And I don't know how to solve that.

Imagine someone tells that Russians should pay for 'our' Gholodomor. How would you imagine doing that? By taxing modern Russians? But they didn't take part in that.

BESW

12:31

Eh, I don't buy that "innocence" thing. It's a red herring. The issue isn't culpability, it's injustice.

vicky_molokh

I mean it would be injustice to blame Russians living today for the faults of their parents against us. (It wouldn't be an injustice to blame them for the bad things they actually committed more recently!)

BESW

I have personally and generationally benefited from a personal and generational injustice done to the people who are Native to this place I live. I can't help not, my benefits are built into the fabric of the society they've had imposed on them.

vicky_molokh

Yes, but you (presumably; of course I don't know you well enough to know for sure) did no wrong, so any de facto punitive action against you would be an injustice, even if someone were to call such punishment by some non-punitive euphemism.

BESW

It's therefore my responsibility as a person who values justice and mercy to use the advantages I've been given to empower the people at whose expense those advantages came.

vicky_molokh

And there's no easy solution to the dilemma.

BESW

12:35

Nobody's talking about punitive actions here except you.

Reparations are not punishments.

vicky_molokh

In name, but not in effect. As I said, let's say I start demanding reparations for Gholodomor. But that cannot be done without taking the stuff (money) of Russians who didn't do anything wrong.

The same dilemma applies in your case.

BESW

I think you're again using a really really specific definition for a term that's being used much more broadly in the conversation.

vicky_molokh

(On a tangent, I think stopping doing bad stuff that's currently being done is more important than trying to right/compensate for old wrongs. But that's an additional matter.)

BESW

Both are necessary; righting ongoing injustices is impossible without taking into account the generational deprivation that enables and perpetuates them.

vicky_molokh

I interpreted reparations in a sense similar to how it's used between states - something paid. Maybe I misunderstood your usage.

BESW

12:40

Reparations are about making amends for a wrong and fixing the damage caused by it.

It starts with apologies and talks that identify the wrong and the damage, and it becomes an ongoing process that may take generations to heal. Reparations that have reduced generational trauma to a payment of money have been laughably insufficient to actually address the damage done.

That's why, for example, Guam talks about getting a chance to determine its own political status--because that right has been denied its people for hundreds of years. And the people who would get to vote on such a choice? I shouldn't be among them, because that injustice is the only reason I live here in the first place.

Money's easy. True reparations are hard work.

vicky_molokh

I don't think the damage of a genocide can be 'fixed'. You can't bring people back to life, and you can't just magically pay a compensation by turning people of one nation into another (a facetious scenario, yes). An apology is . . . well I see that as having near-zero value, but maybe I'm atypical. Reversing a centuries-long occupation would likely require things like exiling innocents from their current area of residence and/or denying their voting right.

(Edited to account for your post above.)

BESW

If Guam actually got a chance to determine its political status, it might become an independent nation... or a full State of the USA... or something else entirely. Chances are good that I wouldn't be kicked off the island no matter what, because only a fringe extremist group thinks that's even possible.

vicky_molokh

Granting independence is a reasonable thing though.

BESW

But it'd be totally reasonable for me to have to apply for citizenship to the Nation of Guam and meanwhile I'd be living as a foreign national.

As for generational trauma... that depends on the nature of the trauma and the people involved.

Again, I don't have the right to say how that sort of thing should happen. There are many very smart people who DO have the right to enter that discussion, and they've said many very smart things about it.

My role right now is to use my platform to amplify their voices.

vicky_molokh

@BESW I have very mixed feelings about that one. On one hand, I know firsthand the consequences of having too high a percentage of another, aggressive, nation living within a border of a newly independent state. On the other, it seems wrong to revoke people's citizenship because of their nationality when 'I did not cross the border, the border crossed me' happens.

BESW

12:50

I get that. But I'd caution against generalizing your experience to a universal one.

vicky_molokh

Oh, my stance against revoking citizenships comes from an ethical PoV, my stance for it comes from the cynical (in the new sense of the word) pragmatist who's bitter about an annexation/occupation that's been excused through 'needing to protect the interests of brothers abroad'.

kviiri

I can get that, personally.

So much pain about nation states :/

goodguy5

politics chat </snark>

vicky_molokh

I got a lot less humane in the years when that happened. But I didn't forget that I became a worse person. And I don't want other people to become more bitter and less ethical the same way I did.

kviiri

But I think self-rule is a very ethical as well as pragmatic

vicky_molokh

12:54

Thus my caution to people who voice such preferences.

BESW

I live here because my parents and grandparents moved here to benefit from an American war in SEA which exploited Guam's resources and people. America was able to use Guam that way because the American press baited McKinley into starting a war on false pretenses and our previous occupier gave us to America to get the war to stop. And that occupier just sort of waltzed up and went "Welp, these people are living on a convenient island and we can shoot them when they revolt. Bring over the flag!"

(Also because after WWII the UN looked at the situation and went "Eh, the American occupation is justified because Spain gave them permission, and the Spanish occupation was too long ago to bother with, so you people don't get to complain about being exploited by America because you've been exploited for too long.")

vicky_molokh

Pft, as if UN could actually ever do anything. Didn't help in the mid 2010s, didn't help back then either.

BESW

When the League of Nations was first established, someone asked 'Abdu'l-Bahá what He thought about it, and He replied, "It has no teeth."

Interestingly, the UN did give the islands north of us, in the same island chain and with indigenous people of the same culture, which had been occupied for just as long but by a different chain of nations, the opportunity for self-determination because its former occupiers were on the losing side of the war.

vicky_molokh

Oh yeah, military power seems like a guideline UN listens to a lot more.

goodguy5

@vicky_molokh the UN COULD do something.

vicky_molokh

13:03

Like what? Get hit by a veto in the UNSC?

Or maybe enforce its decisions somehow?

goodguy5

yes, those things

I didn't say "would"

vicky_molokh

Which is pointless.

That's just talks.

goodguy5

but they have the power to do things

vicky_molokh

Not really.

goodguy5

vicky_molokh

13:05

I remember the 2015s era. Despite being close to consensus, all the UN could do was wave its finger disapprovingly and express its deepest concerns.

It can't actually enforce its rulings on the nuclear states.

Heck, it can't really enforce its rulings even on the weaker states unless one of the big dogs decides to chime in.

One could argue whether that is good or bad, of course.

BESW

Yeah, in order for it to really work at least one major power would have to choose to be humble and back the UN's decisions without using its support as a cudgel and/or going off on its own.

Colin Gross

@vicky_molokh As long as it's stronger than the league of nations, I'm happy.

BESW

Improvement! And we can still learn and improve.

Colin Gross

@BESW What do you want to name the next thing?

"The Collective" sounds too hive mindish for me.

BESW

I always liked the Haudenosaunee Great Tree of Peace.

Colin Gross

13:12

What's a Huadenosaunee?

BESW

The Kayanerenh-kowa, the Great Peace, the Five Nations Confederacy. Known in American textbooks as the Iroquois Confederacy, but that's... not a great word.

user15026

@BESW it is not, no!

Colin Gross

Never heard it as a confederacy. The Five Nations I do recognize.

trogdor

13:27

@BESW Durr I don't see a problem,... oh wait yeah that

vicky_molokh

It's annoying that a certain period in the history of one state seems to have 'tainted' a political term in a wider context.

Colin Gross

@vicky_molokh Yeah. I hate it when history ruins words and symbols.

Eventually memory fades though, and it's valid for use again... just might take a few ... dozen... generations.

BESW

You're telling me. Every time I mention the Five-Year Plan to somebody outside the Baha'i community I get really weird looks.

vicky_molokh

Oh cool, somebody remembers Five-Year Plans. Overall the world seems eager forget the history of the second world.

Then again, assumption that only socialists can have them is . . . yeah.

Colin Gross

13:46

@vicky_molokh yeah, five year plan is a phrase that's been back in use and doesn't evoke the visceral reactions it once did. A number of interviewers have no problem asking candidates, "what's your five year plan?"

KorvinStarmast

13:56

@vicky_molokh The UN, and specifically the role of the UNSC, was set up by the powers of the world (at the time) to support their interests. If the veto wasn't there, none of the major powers would have joined and the UN would have gone the way of the league of nations. Those who believe that altruism drove the founding of the UN are living in a fantasy world.

vicky_molokh

Yeah.

The point still stands that as a 'world cop', it's corrupt and powerless at the same time.

KorvinStarmast

As a collective security organization, it has mixed virtues and vices. As "a world cop" it is heavily influence by the interests of member nations. That is by design.

not to mention the financial aspect/corruption of nations offering troops for a fee to UN operations, and other nations offering troops and not charging the UN (I think the term is 'seconded' or something like that ... the details of that are part of the dirty little secrets piece that don't become apparent until you operate in that situation in real life.

kviiri

14:26

@KorvinStarmast Did you have a chance to try out Crisis in the Kremlin yet?

I finally managed a successful "Soviet Union" of sorts. Namely, building a heavily export-focused economy at the expense of maintaining an army and gradual relaxation of state control on media made my Russia an economic powerhouse. The union itself broke to a billion little pieces, of course, but my scientists discovered a HIV vaccine so that's a plus I guess.

Colin Gross

14:42

@kviiri That sounds like a good result.

Does that count as winning?

KorvinStarmast

@kviiri I don't see me getting any new games for a month or so. My leisure time has been reassigned somewhat by our lady of the house of starmast, so I'll need to take a peek at it in maybe May.

kviiri

15:20

@ColinGross The game doesn't really track victory apart from "got ousted from power" vs not

You do get scores tho

@KorvinStarmast That's alright, it's an old game, not a new one

:-)

Derpy

15:55

@kviiri As an alternative, play the original "The Oregon Trail" game

doppelgreener

16:23

I just read a great comment summarising a common issue:

By the way, please do not use "wiki" as a synonym for "Wikipedia". A wiki is a site built using a particular technology. Wikipedia is only one of many such sites, nor was it the first. Saying "According to wiki" is rather like saying "According to book" without mentioning which book. — David Siegel 22 hours ago

Yuuki

16:33

@doppelgreener According to bookpedia, this is rather prescriptivist.

doppelgreener

Fun fact: Today was the first time we've kicked a question off HNQ. (Unless another mod beat me to it with another question and I didn't notice.)

2

It was that choke points question, because it was heading in a direction where it would've usually been closed as POB.

GreySage

@doppelgreener Do you do that just by protecting it?

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, body starts with title and ends in url, pattern-matching website in body, +3 more (687): thesupplementchoice.com/supreme-vigor/ by janilr weqe on rpg.SE (@doppelgreener)

Sdjz

@GreySage I think it is a different option altogether

Derpy

@doppelgreener Saw people that use "wikia" instead of "wiki" too, probably because "Wikia" is a somehow famous wiki-hosting site.

Colin Gross

16:48

@doppelgreener Problem with vernacular. Rollerblades are inline skates. Google isn't the internet.

I would interpret "according to wiki" as either "according to wikipedia" if there wasn't much context or possible "according to the wiki" if I was aware there might be a context specific wiki out there.

doppelgreener

@GreySage There's a specific mod menu option we have.

It's entirely separate from protecting, it's a specific "remove from hot network questions" hammer.

Yuuki

@ColinGross Really, this just means that we should use "according to bookpedia" now.

doppelgreener

@ColinGross FWIW Wikipedia itself asks people not to refer to it as "wiki" for the reason that person mentioned.

They don't want people to think of them as the only wiki.

Colin Gross

@Yuuki I think that's probably the correct solution. Just shorten it to booki. /S

doppelgreener

@Yuuki Hard agreement

@ColinGross Also good, rhymes with wookiee, all is well

GreySage

16:55

@Sdjz Wow, that's actually some really good work by the Stack Staff. Surprising.

Colin Gross

@doppelgreener Which related to illicit gambling tabulators, will also tear your arms off in some cases.

This works on so many levels. Like a parfait

Rubiksmoose

17:07

@doppelgreener btw I am thinking about proposing that we add the HNQ feed to chat on meta. To raise more awareness of what question are hot or not (for the sake of identifying potential or ongoing issues and noticing trends maybe). Do you have any first run thoughts on how good of any idea it is? Crazy?

David Coffron

@Xirema the fact that you can get so many trials in such a short time strikes in me some slight envy

doppelgreener

@Rubiksmoose It's going to be very noisy. Questions come and go.

Rubiksmoose

@DavidCoffron He has a really big bag of dice and is a quick counter ;) (I know he has a super cool program, but let me have this eh?)

doppelgreener

If there's an RPG-specific HNQ feed, we could/should use that.

Rubiksmoose

@doppelgreener I'd have to look at the way the SRSs are set up, but if they are keyed off the marker the system now puts on them they would only appear once in the feed per post.

doppelgreener

17:13

I'd hook it up to "be ready to downvote tons of answers to these questions" room. :)

Rubiksmoose

@doppelgreener There is. I'm looking into it more, but people have developed streams for each site. There might even be a better way to do it now with the improvements (eg the timeline event).

Just trying to guage whether you (or anybody) had a leaning on the idea before I dedicated too much time to it (the details are obviously going to be important for a good proposal)

doppelgreener

Having visibility into what questions on our site hit HNQ could be useful.

Xirema

@Rubiksmoose Yes. I am capable of counting more outcomes than there are Stars in the observable universe within 0.03 seconds. ;)

doppelgreener

Bear in mind: some questions hit HNQ once for 15 minutes and then fall off again. My interest in this is so that we can keep our eyes out for garbage.

Rubiksmoose

@Xirema meh, but how fast can you solve a 3x3x3 Rubik's cube? ;)

@doppelgreener That was exactly my thinking as well.

Xirema

17:17

@Rubiksmoose The exactly one time I ever tried to solve a Rubik's cube, it took me 30 minutes, following a guide. I've never properly taught myself the process.

MikeQ

@Xirema Counting the stars is easy during the daytime

Rubiksmoose

@Xirema of course not, you were spending all that time teaching yourself to count all those dice.

GreySage

@Rubiksmoose Different skills for different disciplines

Xirema

@DavidCoffron You can take some pride that your question motivated me to add a new function, flatten() to my RollBuilder object. All it does is take non-zero outcomes and make them equal to 1, but it is one of those things that you need to do a lot more often than you'd expect.

So the entire code to represent this problem is

factory.getXdYRoll(11,8).filter(59, FilterType.GREATER_EQUAL_TO).flatten().repeat(3)

doppelgreener

@Rubiksmoose Proper answer to this: global HNQ feed not so useful, RPG-specific HNQ feed definitely useful and worth trialling.

Rubiksmoose

17:30

Cool! I should have been more clear. I hadn't even considered adding the global HNQ feed here lol. I agree that would be a mess.

thanks for your feedback :)

vicky_molokh

@Rubiksmoose What, three rows, three columns, and only three sides? ^_^

Rubiksmoose

@vicky_molokh hah! The non euclidean geometry is what makes it fun!

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