We have a lot of well known users in chat right now, I have a question. Do any of you guys conlang? I did a survey a while ago on reddit and it seems conlanging is the least popular worldbuilding type, even less than Alt history!
'twas but a day ago on the factory floor. A discussion was held about the beauty of languages and thus the brave builders came up with the idea of creating a new language, one to surpass them all, a language to rule them all! A language to find them! A LANGUAGE TO BRING THEM ALL AND IN THE DARKNE...
@TinyTrEs-2b I have very, very, very lightly dabbled in colang. Whenever I stick a toe in it seems like it would take far more effort to do right than I would get satisfaction or use from it.
Yeah technically, Asperger's is no longer a condition in the official sense, but according to its old definition I would have been it if I was tested a year earlier
In case anyone is interested, Assassins Creed 3 is free on the Ubisoft website. The website appears to be receiving the hug of death at the moment, but I'm hopeful that I'll be able to log in eventually.
My favorite memory from AC3 is when it glitched and I could carry around a woodaxe as a primary weapon. When I came back the next day, I couldn't get it to happen again, and I knew I would never again feel so badass.
Anyone know of any good tablet deals? Looking for something around 10 inches that I can download movies onto for the kids to watch while traveling (so I want a 64+ gB micro SD slot too)
@dot_Sp0T Seems I can't if it has answers already. Anyways, I was mostly trying to do something more fun than answering serious questions. Maybe I'll figure out good ways sooner or later. :)
@ThomBlairIII Some people I work with enjoy their time working from home (granted, their commutes are borderline insane). I don't like it. When I'm home, I don't want to be thinking about work.
Yeah, sometimes I wish I could find a good job I could enjoy enough to do from home, but they are easier to imagine and hope for than they are to find.
Your mom is an alien and your space dad will be coming for you some day soon. He is an evil emperor and a seer foretold that you would one day overthrow him. And once you did you would reward your friend James with his own planet.
I've found that if you have a really good PM, that you get along with and who actually does their job, PMs can be a huge benefit. If they do their job and pleasant to work with....otherwise, they're a living hell.
I would really love it if down the road Android went totally modular. So you could get just a kernel update or something to update all the things that aren't phone dependant
Or, better still. Made each device in the phone/tablet conform to a generic driver spec, much like USB mass storage devices or human interface devices do now. You don't need a special driver to use a generic USB mouse.
Then with this well defined interface, as long as a phone's camera or whatever conforms to the standard, you should be able to swap in a new, also-conformant kernel without difficulty.
A huge change in the phone market dynamics. Perhaps we'll see it with more people keeping their phones for longer and demanding that their older but still serviceable hardware get updates to the latest and greatest Android.
This would require punishment of OEMs who don't update and rewarding those that do update. Not sure how to go about doing that.
@AndyD273 I don't know how to punish carriers who don't want to do QA on older devices. If the costs are so high upfront to do QA, then a generic driver model would ease that pain a lot because there would be fewer degrees of freedom.
@AndyD273 If a carrier like T-Mobile decided it was in their best interests to upgrade older devices and they experienced increased subscriptions because of it then VZ and ATT would feel pressure to follow suit.
I've been fielding QA issues for a project today while it's going though UAT. It's taken a huge amount of will-power not to shout "Expeliarmus!!" every time I closed one down.
Yeah. I'm thinking standardized drivers so that the hardware is abstracted, combined with a modular OS so that pieces of it can be updated through the play store without a huge software push, then the manufactures and carriers wouldn't have to do much at all.
I have a feeling I'm going to need to conserve my energy for a Patronus at some point. Those issues normally crop up about five minutes before I'm due to leave for the day.
I am currently slogging through the collected series. Just started the Order of the Phoenix and now I remember how bored I got watching the last films.
@Pete How about: Merchants have started importing cheap magic lamps lately. Most of these magic lamps are very low quality, and so the wishes evaporate like faerie gold, but some good ones have also been found, and this has had the side effect causing some disruption in the currency. What would be the best way to tax lasting income through magic wishes?
You could also sprinkle in a handful of evil genies that want to twist wishes to their own dark amusement.
@AndyD273 Wouldn't you still tax it like normal? At some point the income has to pass into the normal economy so it either needs to be taxed or be laundered.
Maybe your second wish should be for perfect money laundering capabilities.
@Green It depends. It's kind of like getting paid under the table. If the genie doesn't report paying you, and you don't report getting paid, and there is no paper trail...
@JoeBloggs There is a EULA written in old enochian stamped into the bottom of each lamp saying that all wishes are granted without warranty and without promise of longevity. Also if you try to sue us we get to eat your soul.
I kinda see the whole thing as a kind of lottery. You might get a dud, you might get something malevolent, but you MIGHT get a jackpot. You never know.
@dot_Sp0T But the concept is so alien I can't even imagine it.
Like sitting here I can't force myself not to think in the context of a language. Even when playing a twitchy shooter or watching a movie I have an internal monologue going that both guides and controls all thought.
Googling around some people actually don't think that way, but... I can describe that in words but I can't really picture it.
@NexTerren I need to run for dinner, but if you like we could discuss this a little more in an hour or so; it might be worth having a look at Metacognition; in order to get a bigger picture of your own thinking
To give you some food for thought: I believe I do not think in language actively. Because when I really start thinking about things I often realize I lack the words to tell someone what I want to describe/convey - but I have a clear picture, idea
@dot_Sp0T: Re your new bounty on dragon butchering, am I able to post a second answer, or (having posted one already), am I limited to editing my previous one? I believe there are logistical issues so far unaddressed, such as tools and materials. Some prep advice touches on culinary issues, so I fear some food commentary may find it's way in.
@Catalyst I don't believe there is anything stopping you from making a second answer. The system will question if you really want to do that, but it will allow it to happen.
@Catalyst well, I added a description to the bounty asking for more detail in the answer; writing up a new answer doesn't really make sense then, does it? :)
@NexTerren seems I am home all alone; which means I'll skip people-dinner for some simple nutrient intake in front of my curved monitor
@AndyD273 I honestly do not care if they add to their answers or write up a completely new one; I just mean to say that I do not see it as a necessity to start over :) - After all, I'm just interested in the answers
Re Metacognition, I kinda wonder if I do both? Like, I always have an inner voice doing the thinking or reading, but then sometimes it works a different way and is more visualizing... I do know that sometimes I have a hard time coming up with the words to express the thoughts.
@dot_Sp0T I just like looking for loopholes. I think it's a character flaw, though it works ok with world building
@AndyD273 some call it a flaw, others will call it a word-that-expresses-the-opposite-of-flaw,-something-good-making-you-strong-smart-special-stuff-like-that-you-know?
@dot_Sp0T Don't think so. Crazy people can't imagine themselves as crazy, and I've asked myself if I'm crazy lots of times. So far the answer has always been no.
Re metacognition: I find myself bouncing between styles: pictures (AKA visual/spatial) versus words (AKA audio/sequential), rather than one mode only or always.
I sometimes talk to myself in my head, and then I'll come to something I forget the word for, and it's really hard for me to move past it, even though I know I know what I mean
The dog is gone, but I was able to convince the wife that it was her idea that it would be better off in another home, and there was absolutely no involvement of 4 ounces of bakers chocolate laying on the edge of the counter in easy reach.
@AndyD273 I originally read this as "4 ounces of Quaker Oats chocolate" which didn't make any sense but is an interesting product diversification for Quaker Oats.
@Catalyst No, the dog went back to the humane society. It really was best for the dog honestly. It wasn't a good fit in our home, it just took the wife a couple years to see that for herself. The neighbors helped. They disliked the dog about as much as I did
Honestly, I should have followed through with my promise the first day: "If you bring home a dog without me being part of the decision I'm taking it back." But I didn't.
I still don't get why sociopaths don't care about other humans
I mean, even Spock cares about the emotions of other humans, because those emotions could get him killed
my plan for eliminating sociopathic behaviour is to make it socially unacceptable to be a sociopath. That way, they'll all get really good at faking emotions, which should be just as good as the real thing
@DaaaahWhoosh Not being a sociopath I don't know either. If I was a sociopath it might be that I might not consider that other people even have feelings. Or at least not ones that matter. I believe it's like that for Asperger sufferers to some extent too?
@DaaaahWhoosh It actually depends on how you see it. Me forgiving you for being a jerk isn't to help you, it's to help me not be mad about it. Me being mad doesn't really hurt you at all. but it does hurt me. So if I forgive you, I'm dropping the charges and letting the hurt go. That doesn't mean I'd invite you over for dinner anytime soon though. You jerk.
@AndyD273 lol yeah but see, that's what I was saying, forgiveness doesn't really have to do with the other person. It's just you coming to terms with the fact that they aren't the person you thought they were
I guess it just doesn't mesh with how I feel people understand forgiveness. Like free will, it's just a sort of vacuous concept
plus, by that definition forgiveness should happen twice. Once when you realize what they've done, and again when you realize their reasons for doing what they did
but there is no word for when you realize someone has done something you didn't think they'd do
I'm respectfully of the opinion that spirituality is somewhat vacuous too. Everything I know about how someone spiritually feels maps very closely with their emotional state.
And agree that forgivness is about making yourself feel better.
And note that the Christian god are often portrayed as divine protectors and perfect judges....which makes sense for people to want in a world of profound injustice and random acts of death and destruction.
@DaaaahWhoosh One of the best logical descriptions I've seen for why God has to be the way he's described is given in "The Lectures on Faith" by Joseph Smith Jr. (Not that I'm endorsing him or the religion he started, in any way.)
He says "God has to be all powerful else that means there is someone more powerful than himself and if this is the case, religious people would want to worship the more powerful being."
It's "God by logical construct" not "God by empirical evidence". Any philosophy student knows that you can prove any theorem if you pick the right set of axioms.
An interesting thing I've been thinking about; a few of the theories going around actually make it more likely that there is a God. If you look at the simulation hypothesis, then there is a being that set everything up and created the universe and everything in it.
And in a superstring universe where you have branes and bulk, you start looking at the descriptions of a 10th dimensional being, and it's basically a god. And in a infinite multiverse where the probability of a 10th dimentional being existing does not = 0...
If all of time and space was rolled out in front of you like a 10 dimensional tablecloth, and you'd already seen all the stars and stuff and know intimately exactly how they work, looking at the lives of these little beings that are separate from yourself would probably be interesting.
@AndyD273 That reminds me of the God Emperor of Dune where humanity becomes mind numbingly boring. Sure, you can see everything but if this mind is even remotely human, it will want to find/make new things, learn new things, keep exploring. At the highest levels of existence, there's nothing else to discover.
It would be kind of like us studying the psychology and social behavior or ants, for instance, to learn how they work. Their society is structured much different from ours, and it's fairly efficient. We could learn a thing or two from them. Maybe a 10-dimensional being could learn something from us.
@HDE226868 "Follow me, my brothers, and you shall see what even God himself cannot!"
"This AI has never drowned the entire world, never commanded a father to kill his son, never cast us out of paradise for seeking knowledge. Under its guidance, humanity has achieved perfect happiness. Why shouldn't we worship it?"
"You can't stop me. No one can stop me. Not even God can stop me now. But I wonder, can I stop myself-"
@DaaaahWhoosh If it keeps its Recommended Standard Operating procedures up to date and doesn't base them on a culture 3000 years old, that's an AI worth paying attention to (but not blindly following).
@DaaaahWhoosh One singular power that cannot be stopped by another being with literally every other power? You'll have to be awfully creative with that one.
@Green I want to make it clear, I have about five WB-related short stories I need to write. The first one is either about the site design or balloon whales, I can't remember which came first
The eye of a celestial tabby?Sometimes all we want to do is to write about people. Maybe humans with a funny hairdo and some odd quirks, or animals with human brains that speak and perceive like we do, but fundamentally just people that you or I can relate to. Can empathise with. But sometimes that isn’t enough. As Worldbuilders sometimes we need to try and find something new. That search for …
The Factory Floor
The Factory Floor