Suchian Musings And Ramblings About General Designs Involving Notable Estuaries

Ali_Roz

Despite being a rare non-unpronounceable former nuclear launch code, faneiopasoiefinpasofinaspoefinasefpoisnifpaoseinapsoifenapsofeinapsfeoniapif has no results on Google.

Ali_Roz

Aliroz said:

Aliroz said:

PI DAY, EVERYBODY!

Ali_Roz

Its actually snowing outside, because the weather is pulling a prank on us all today.

It hasn't snowed since late February.

Ali_Roz

Citizen: Oh no! The oldest cherry tree in Gotham has been stolen! With the recent blight and the creation of sweeter varieties of cherries over the past half-century, it's the only one of its kind left!

Other Citizen: This is the pits! 

MEANWHILE, IN THE BATCAVE 

Robin: It's a good thing Commissioner Gordon let us take the only evidence home. I can't count the number of times that villains have snatched crucial evidence from the city's forensics department. 

Batman: Well, chum, it did have my name on it. It says "FOR BAT" on the envelope. 

Robin: The Riddler's handwriting! I'd know it anywhere. 

Batman: Tampering with the mail is a crime, and is disrespectful to hard-working postmen everywhere. Only a dastardly fiend like the riddler would leave a letter at a crime scene instead of properly mailing it. 

Robin: Let's open the envelope. 

Robin: Holy parchment, Batman! It's nothing but a blank piece of paper, egads! 

Batman: I think I know where Riddler and the old cherry tree are 

LATER, IN MALAYSIA:

The Riddler (sitting in an old cherry tree): Haha! They'll never find me here! I've finally stumped Gotham's fines- 

Robin: Not so fast, Riddler! 

The Riddler: What?! How! 

Batman: The tree you stole was planted on August 16, 1823, under the Gregorian Calendar.  

Robin: Gregorian as in Gregorian Chant! 

Batman: Which rhymes with Immanuel Kant. 

Robin: "For" and "Bat" both have three letters! The third letter of "Immanuel" is "m"

Batman: "M" for Malaysia! 

The Riddler: Curses! You found my clues and solved it! 

ONE FIGHT SCENE LATER 

The Riddler: Drat. 

Robin: Looks like crime is, in the end, a fruitless endeavor! 

Ali_Roz

MEANWHILE, AT THE BATCAVE: Alfred: Hmm. I haven't seen paper like this in a long time. Good quality pulp, must be Malaysian.

glennmagusharvey

nice. :D

i lol'd

Ali_Roz

Me, when I learn that somebody made an expansion to Age of Mythology with a new civilization:  :D

Me, when I learn that the civilization is not one of the ones that included the Tigris-Euphrates River System:  ??!

Me, when I learn that it's China, so including the Shang from Age of Empires I, that means some variant of the Chinese are in every Age of Empires except for Galactic Battlegrounds, which makes them the main characters of the series:  O.O

Ali_Roz

Conclusion:  This means that every Age of Empires game ought to have the Chinese Alligator as a creature in it, in addition to the Crocodile.

Ali_Roz

Anyways, before it's over:

Happy Homestuck Day.

glennmagusharvey

i read up on the chinese alligator and i learned about the only other extant species of alligator

Odradek

https://twitter.com/Okuyama0413/status/1249696152468914176

Princess Alice

Ali_Roz said:

Citizen: Oh no! The oldest cherry tree in Gotham has been stolen! With the recent blight and the creation of sweeter varieties of cherries over the past half-century, it's the only one of its kind left!

Other Citizen: This is the pits! 

MEANWHILE, IN THE BATCAVE 

Robin: It's a good thing Commissioner Gordon let us take the only evidence home. I can't count the number of times that villains have snatched crucial evidence from the city's forensics department. 

Batman: Well, chum, it did have my name on it. It says "FOR BAT" on the envelope. 

Robin: The Riddler's handwriting! I'd know it anywhere. 

Batman: Tampering with the mail is a crime, and is disrespectful to hard-working postmen everywhere. Only a dastardly fiend like the riddler would leave a letter at a crime scene instead of properly mailing it. 

Robin: Let's open the envelope. 

Robin: Holy parchment, Batman! It's nothing but a blank piece of paper, egads! 

Batman: I think I know where Riddler and the old cherry tree are 

LATER, IN MALAYSIA:

The Riddler (sitting in an old cherry tree): Haha! They'll never find me here! I've finally stumped Gotham's fines- 

Robin: Not so fast, Riddler! 

The Riddler: What?! How! 

Batman: The tree you stole was planted on August 16, 1823, under the Gregorian Calendar.  

Robin: Gregorian as in Gregorian Chant! 

Batman: Which rhymes with Immanuel Kant. 

Robin: "For" and "Bat" both have three letters! The third letter of "Immanuel" is "m"

Batman: "M" for Malaysia! 

The Riddler: Curses! You found my clues and solved it! 

ONE FIGHT SCENE LATER 

The Riddler: Drat. 

Robin: Looks like crime is, in the end, a fruitless endeavor! 

Ali_Roz said:

MEANWHILE, AT THE BATCAVE: Alfred: Hmm. I haven't seen paper like this in a long time. Good quality pulp, must be Malaysian.

This was good. I laughed.

glennmagusharvey

i wonder if you might get a kick out of this

Ali_Roz

No, dude, don't try to turn Tumbleweed to your advantage...  It's like science fiction, the impossible-to-kill alien that adapts to anything should NOT be harnessed for good.

Don't be those scientists in the movies that are always falling in love with the Xenomorph-type monster, or thinking they can prevent the experiment that they tortured from hating them.

When you have a perfectly good bioweapon, you use it as a bioweapon or in your research to combat bioweapons or as tests for your other bioweapons or as a torture or murdering implement.  While I have concerns about my university, it does some remarkably good work with regards to finding inventive ways to kill certain crop-wrecking insects.

Ali_Roz

All joking aside, that is some fascinating research.  Good find.

glennmagusharvey

https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/g9eswo/an_american_crocodile_on_a_gentle_evening_stroll/

Odradek

Muddy Alligators, painted in 1917 by renowned portrait artist John Singer Sargent

Ali_Roz

A stupid Poem, by Me

Have you ever eaten a sandwich

in the morning's soft rain

minutes after your true love has vanished

from the bunker in spain?

Ali_Roz

NOTE:  "sandwich" and "vanished" are not intended to rhyme.  I try to, in poetry, use only rhymes that are both eye-rhymes and ear-rhymes.

"Through" and "Though":  NO

"Trail" and "Fell":  NO

"Fabulous" and "Sabulous":  YES

Ali_Roz

For the first time since April 2017,  I'm going to play Age of Empires II again.

After all this time, it's finally lost bad associations it had picked up through no fault of its own, leaving only the good associations.  

I mean, the definitive version on steam (which I will be playing) is a strange thing 20 years removed from the cd version I still have (but am too scared to play for fear of damaging a childhood relic and and an heirloom from my brother), but still, an old friend is still an old friend, even if it grew up over the years  (I first got into the game watching my brother play it as a little kid,  and the definitive edition was his birthday gift for me on my most recent birthday).

Also, it gives me a reason outside of a work-friend's birthday (which is fun, but phone calls and discord stress me out) to have something to look forward to today (my sister is graduating today, and I hate graduations).

Ali_Roz

https://myarmoury.com/features.html

This is a good website.

Ali_Roz

I'm enjoying the civilization editor in SMAX.  It's fun to mess with the game's Mad Libs to make serious characters say silly things.

Ali_Roz

My sisters went to a protest today, drawing art on the sidewalk with chalk.  I told them it was a bad idea given that our valley's incidence of the disease doubles every 3.6 days, but my portents of doom never did dissuade them from anything they really wanted to do.

I don't like protests, I don't care what's being protested (you could be protesting child trafficking or protesting Not Giving Aliroz A Hundred Thousand Dollars, and I'd still not join it).  I don't like crowds, I don't like noise, I don't like hand-held overlarge signs with pictures and words on them held by upset people, I don't like the often-unavoidable obstruction of non-protest activity, I don't like the way it reminds me of other protests I've had to put up with, I don't like the conflict it represents.

I mean, it's cool that my sisters care so much about something that clearly does deserve to be cared about, and it's not like they made me go or anything, I just wish that our parents would support my being-upset-about-things-in-an-inappropriate-manner the same way they support my sisters' being-upset-about-things-in-an-appropriate-manner (if the thing which is upsetting is the substance, then the methods of being upset are the form, and my parents have a huge bias towards form over substance, of means over ends, and reasons over conclusions [not that that's a bad thing, but it is frustrating  {this is not a cool way to do parentheses-in-parentheses, I should stop doing it <doing doing doing boing boing doing boing doing.>}])

glennmagusharvey

Did your sisters at least wear face masks to protect their noses and mouths?

Ali_Roz

Of course they did, and brought spares!  The police also showed up to the protest with extra masks just in case anybody needed them (also soda and Pizza, because our social issue isn't the police [who are largely kept in check by the fragmentation of the police into different city polices, different district polices, and the county police {and also by, in my opinion, a couple of lifetimes of hard work by underappreciated decent people whose names I will never know}], so much as its the fact that of our 125,000 people, 931 have the virus when fewer than 400 had it four days ago, and our city and county councils are begging the state to rescind emergency status).

Ali_Roz

Apparently, back in the 1990s, it was not uncommon to speak of "solving" a computer or video game.  

When I think of "solving" a game, I think of completing it to my satisfaction in such a way as to feel no need to continue playing.  Like solving a jigsaw puzzle, or a wooden block configuration puzzle.

For me, to solve Civilization IV with the Warlords expansion pack would mean:

27 cities not counting my original (call this city O).

Three of these cities form (an approximation of) an equilateral triangle with my original city in the center of that triangle.  Call these cities C1 (to the north of O), C2 (to the south and west of O), and C3 (to the south and East of O)

Three other of these cities (D1, D2, and D3), each of which are coastal dock-cities (and which are the only coastal cities), form (an approximation of) an equilateral triangle with the previous three cities (C1, C2, and C3) being the midpoints (so C1 is at the midpoint between D1 and D3, and C2 is at the midpoint between D1 and D2, and C3 is at the midpoint between D2 and D3).  To reiterate, this will make another equilateral triangle with C at its center, but opposite in orientation, and with each side twice as long as any side of the first triangle.

Around each of  C1, C2, and C3, are seven cities in (an approximation of) a heptagon centered on their respective C city.   The circles corresponding to these heptagons do not touch.  These 21 cities will each have one and only one wonder, whereas the C cities, the D cities, and O will have 4 wonders each.

Those seven cities in a heptagon around C1 (called here H1C1, H2C1, H3C1, H4C1, H5C1, H6C1, and H7C1) are each the sacred city of a different in-game religion (in other words, they must be timed right so as to be the most recent city founded at the point when certain technologies are researched), and, as such, will have the sacred city wonder which can be made by a Great Prophet unit.  Thus, I show no favoritism towards any in-game religion.

The remaining 14 heptagon-cities will have the 14 wonders not mentioned as belonging to the cities denoted by C, D, or O.

D1, which, as implied before, is north and west of O and directly west of C1, will have The Colossus, the University of Sankore, the Apollo Program, and SDI.  This represents the search for information.

D2, which, as implied before, is directly south of O and directly south and east of C2 and directly south and west of C3, will have The Great Lighthouse, The Great Library, The Internet, and The Eiffel Tower.  This represents the gathering of information (the EIffel Tower counts as a broadcast tower in every city)

D3, which, as implied before, is north and east of O and directly east of C1, will have The Statue of Liberty, Oxford University, The Manhattan Project, and The Red Cross.  This represents the application of information (headcanon/RP that after doing The Manhattan Project, the cultural and social guilt drove D3 to make The Red Cross).

O will have the Pyramids, Ironworks, the Three Gorges Dam (modded to be the Hoover Dam, because it's my game, and I'm not a dam communist), and The Space Elevator.  It represents my need for engineering buffs.

C1 will have The Palace, Chichen Itza, Ankor Wat, and The Pentagon.  It represents my need for military buffs.

C2 will have The Forbidden City, The Hanging Gardens, The Great Wall (it makes an awesome wall around your cultural border when you first make it, and doesn't change after.  It will surround all cities except D1, D2, and D3, which will not have been founded yet, and so since none of my cultural boundary will be on coast, it will be a coherent vaguely-triangular blob), and the Taj Mahal.  It represents my need to have what I consider the wonders with the prettiest in-game creation videos all in the same place.

C3 will have Versailles, The Oracle, The Temple of Artemis, and The Parthenon.  It represents my need to have shiny white buildings.

Every one of my 28 cities has a different group of three religions, for 28 of the 30 ways to pick 3 from 7 if order doesn't matter.  Each of my 28 cities will have the following 20 "necessary" buildings:  Walls, Castle, Aqueduct, Colosseum (the most fun to look at and to zoom in on), Library, University, Courthouse, Theater (don't worry, it's a greek-looking amphitheater, presumably for Roz-approved Greek Tragedy only), Bank, Hospital, Factory, and Recycling Center (the first two are needed for a wonder, the second two for production and making my citizens not die, respectively), a forge and a monastery of each of the city's three religions, a temple of each of the city's three religions, and a cathedral to the main religion in the city. 

Every one of my 28 cities will have a Rifleman to guard it, and an ICBM to scare enemies.  C, O, and D cities will, additionally, have an infantry (ostensibly to guard it, but really to have something to attack enemies with).  O and C cities will, additionally, have a cavalry (ostensibly to guard it, but really to have something to attack enemies with).  D cities will, additionally, have a boat of some kind (so as to circumnavigate the globe, and also ostensibly to have something to attack enemies with, but really to guard the possibly-dissident intellectuals and possibly-disloyal travelers represented by such centers of learning and trade outside the Great Wall and near to enemy culture, because these are the cities furthest from my triple capitals C1, C1, and C3, and will be most likely of all cities to rebel).

I also make a barracks and a stable in O.  Also, D cities have a drydock, a harbor, an airport, and a lighthouse.

Since I research all techs which have a "if you research this first, you get a bonus" techs first, I use my great general from getting Fascism first to get my Cavalry from O to level 6, allowing those two wonders which would require a leveled military unit.

I will have 21 workers, each associated with an H city.

This comes out to 714 things.

Ali_Roz

The game is built around the number 7, and my ternary compulsion requires divisibility by 3.

Ali_Roz

Grapefruit is a fun word to say.

Ali_Roz

A few days ago, I brought Skyrim, since I can run it on my laptop (my laptop that used to be my brother's gaming laptop, and then was my University-Stuff Laptop, and now is my gaming laptop until the semester starts and I uninstall Steam).

My head-canon is that all my characters are related.  My character from Arena married my character from Daggerfall, and they had three kids, two of which were my characters from Morrowind or Oblivion, Respectively, and the third of which is an ancestor of my character in Skyrim.

For Arena, my female Argonian is named Mez.  For Daggerfall, my male Argonian is named Tim-Sah.  In Morrowind, my female Argonian Mage was Mez-Nah Nefelesh.  For Oblivion, my male Argonian Warrior is named Tim-Sah Buwaya.  This is the "canon" headcanon, but does not represent my first attempts at playing, but my main attempts at playing once I figure out what I'm doing and start over to "win" by making the best possible character from my point of view.

In the alternate universe, it's Tim, Mez-nah, Tim-Sah Buwaya, and Mez-Nah Nefelesh.  The alternate universe represents first playthroughs.

So, failing to come up with a good fourth-name-to-add, my first playthrough Argonian male from the alternate universe is the thief Timsah Bwaya Nefelesh.

(My headcanon for my main-universe-headcanon "what happens after Skyrim" is that Meznah Neflesh Buwaya dies, but manages to prove to the Khajit that the Thalmor stole the moons that one time, thus wrecking a whole bunch of bad-guy-plans and also being a nod to how my brother usually played Khajit when I was a kid.)

(And yes, Mez dies in the beginning scenes of Oblivion, because I couldn't bear to have her outlive Uriel Septim after going through so much to save him in Arena.  Probably went out heroically as a captain of the guard.)

(Note, I've never finished, or even half-finished, any of these games, and probably have lots of stupid ideas about the Lore.  Whatever, it's a family of Empire-loyalist kleptomaniacs, and so it should surprise nobody I'm going with the Empire side of the civil war for the same reason that my character in New Vegas supports the NCR:  You gotta stay loyal to your buddies from previous games, you know?)

Also why the heck is there no jumping skill?  0/10 GAME IS DUMB.  WILL STILL PLAY.

Ali_Roz

Central Avenue said:

Sarsaparilla: My mom owns an appliance store.

Lemon Drop: That doesn't sound so bad.

Sarsaparilla: It's not so bad, except...she wants me to take over the family business when I grow up.

Lemon Drop: Do you not like appliances?

Sarsaparilla: It's not about the appliances. I just don't want to own a business. Grown-ups make it sound like you spend your entire life being bossed around waiting until the day when you get to be the one bossing other people around. And I don't want that! 

Lemon Drop: Because you don't want to be bossed around, or you don't want to boss others around?

Sarsaparilla: Both! I don't think anybody should be bossing anybody around!

Lemon Drop: Everybody has somebody telling them what to do.

Sarsaparilla: Yeah, well, not me. I don't want to be "successful". I just want to be free.

Central Avenue said:

It probably says a lot about me that I can articulate why I'm an anarchist way better in this fictional exchange between two children than I ever could speaking as myself.

I would say that it's not about freedom or rights, or about people bossing people around, as it is about service, duty, and obligation.  The world falls apart if people don't work hard to keep it together, and for most of us, we can't go it alone.  A world where I am supported by the work of others (and helped by accommodations others have made for my deficiencies) is a world I am honor-bound to maintain, and a world where I am rightly obligated to help support and accommodate those in need of my service.

As a child, I wanted to be free.  But, understanding the costs of my daily medication... I feel an immense debt to society, to my parents (though they say that it's all just part of being a parent, I still feel like I ought to repay them if I get the money).

In DnD terms, you're Chaotic, Centie, like many children are (and like I was as a child), and since that viewpoint is so well-expressed in the universality of childhood, it makes sense that that's a useful way to articulate it.  In many ways, Society expects people to "mature" from Chaotic to Neutral to Lawful.

Me, though, I'm firmly Lawful.  I think the world could be improved if we talked a little less about our rights and freedoms, and a little more about our duties and obligations (example:  it's not about the freedom to wear or not wear a face-mask during this pandemic, it's about your duty and obligation to other people and the public health).

Chaotic is not necessarily a less mature, or less valid, point of view than Neutral or Lawful.  And, even in terms of public service, Chaotic Good would teach individual children to read while Lawful Good would create/support institutions to reduce public illiteracy by, say, 0.2%, and both would consider their work to be worthy and crucial.  The world needs both, and it needs Neutral to keep them working together.  Because a community/society is made of individuals, and individuals tend to naturally form societies/communities.

I know the DnD alignments are reductive and rightfully criticized, but I think it is a useful paradigm sometimes.

(This post got longer than intended, so I decided to post it in my own thread).

Amnyways, word-garbage over.

glennmagusharvey

Interesting comparison.  Sounds like you may be analogizing chaotic/lawful with individualistic/cooperative, to some extent.

Princess Alice

You know...it's actually nice to see someone articulate the other side of it, because so many people just take the status quo for granted. Thank you so much!

Ali_Roz

@glennmagusharvey: Well, Planescape Torment says:

 Chaotic Good characters aren't concerned with structure or order. They are individualists who tend toward performing acts of kindness.

 @Central Avenue:  You're welcome.

Ali_Roz

Playing Skyrim and good gravy are the graybeards some tedious nincompoops.

Look dumpuses, my dude did a shouty-shout, give him the words and let him go home, don't give him stupid tests, and now a fetch quest what even is this?!!

Look, when my dude does errands for the Imperial Legion, it's because they're understaffed and he took an oath and actually chose to join them.  When he does errands for Jarl Balgruuf, it's because Balgruuf's a bro.  

As the player, I don't remember ever agreeing to do SQUAT for you, or having ANY story-wise reason to feel inclined to fetch your historical artifacts in return for the last word of a shout you CLEARLY HAVE and are WITHHOLDING.  When an actual authority figure gives my dude stuff at the end of a quest, it's a reward for services rendered.  

Ali_Roz

So, I had my dude stab Borri, and then these nerds just straight up one-shotted my dude to death so fast I thought the game glitched, so they can clearly handle whatever's in any dungeon between them and the horn they want.

Ali_Roz

I've been playing a lot of Skyrim, hoping to finish it before the semester starts again.

I try to have my run at least feel "legitimate".  For example, the only permissible things to buy are houses and house upgrades (and carriage rides to undiscovered cities).  Only player-created items can be sold.  Only three consumable items may be consumed (I've used two potions of blacksmithing, which leaves one left).  

Ali_Roz

I remember when North West had the worst person-name.  I can't even spell the name of Elon Musk's new son (poor kid has parents called Musk and Grimes, which makes him the Musky Grimy Baby).

I think it would be very fitting if, when they grew up, Grimy-Musky and North West fell in love and got married.  They could commiserate on their awful names and obnoxious parents.

Also, if it happened, I would get to be the person who predicted it. I mean, that is, assuming nobody else has predicted it yet.

Ali_Roz

I can’t go outside because of the smoke from the California fires.

Princess Alice

Oh no. That really sucks. :(

Ali_Roz

Like many things, AI has surpassed people at making funny absurdist memes.

https://imgflip.com/ai-meme

Here's one I "made" with the generator, that made me giggle:

 

Ali_Roz

from Imgflip Meme Generator

Ali_Roz

from Imgflip Meme Generator

Odradek

Ali_Roz

I had forgotten what day it was until I saw the flags at half-mast.  It's a sunny day outside.

★ ~ S U M M E R ✿ S A U S A G E ! ~ ★

Ali_Roz said:

Despite being a rare non-unpronounceable former nuclear launch code, faneiopasoiefinpasofinaspoefinasefpoisnifpaoseinapsoifenapsofeinapsfeoniapif has no results on Google.

Well now it does!

Ali_Roz

Once, even just once, I'd like to get to play a computer/video game where I can canonically play as a member of my church.

Fallout: New Vegas got very close, being able to interact and have dialogue with members of my faith, and receive a copy of scripture (albeit with a cross on it, because research is hard and nobody plays Bethesda open-world games for their meticulous attention to detail), but the only dialogue options are variations of "thank you, but I don't believe what you believe".

I'd also like to see/read-about a member of my faith in a sci-fi (or, at least, a well-written representation).  Especially ones where members of other real-world religions exist (Dune, Star Trek, possibly Warhammer 40,000 if you count some of its prequel novels, etc).

I mean, you could even work in pioneer/frontier/western/colonization/settlement themes, which are all over science fiction.

Then again, it probably would be awful.  I mean, it's not like it's ever been done well, so maybe non-existence or not-surviving-the-apocalypse is better than bad representation.

Princess Alice

Honestly, it sounds like the way you feel is pretty similar to the way I (and others I know) feel about representation of trans people in fiction.

Trans people are so rarely depicted in fiction, and when they are, it tends to be in ways that actively reinforce harmful stereotypes.

The solution I would like to see is more real trans people being actively involved in the writing or production of fiction depicting trans people.

Perhaps that's the kind of thing you'd like as well? More members of your faith actively involved in shaping depictions of members of your faith in fiction?

glennmagusharvey

would be generally nice to see more depictions of religion that are neither "crazy mystical powers" or "evil crazy cult"

I think in The Legend of Heroes: Trails subseries (1) the church (which seems to generically take after the catholic church, as churches in such games are wont to be) is not an antagonist but is a reasonable part of society, and (2) someone from the church actually stars as the protagonist in the third game

also, The Shivah is a story about a rabbi, and religion plays a meaningful part of that story as well, and it's also set in a realistic setting. also it's a well-written story anyway.

presumably not your faith (which IIRC is LDS), but still

Ali_Roz

I'm fine with "crazy mystical powers", and even with some variations of "evil crazy cult" (considering many of my favorite stories, I'd have to be*), but variety is nice.

* For example, Star Wars, much of Brandon Sanderson's** work, etc.

** He is LDS, like me (your memory is correct). 

Obā-san

Ali_Roz said:

Like many things, AI has surpassed people at making funny absurdist memes.

https://imgflip.com/ai-meme

Here's one I "made" with the generator, that made me giggle:

 

this is excellent, thank you