Two words: gate check

I'll be mostly off social media for the next two weeks.

I'll be mostly off social media for the next two weeks.

If you need me, email me. Those responses will also be delayed, but at least they'll be queued up.

There's a little phone game I've been playing on and off for a while called seedship.

There's a little phone game I've been playing on and off for a while called seedship.

The pitch is: you are an ai tasked with finding humanity a new home. Your performance is based on the quality of work, sure, but the outcomes you care most about are:

Tech, culture, Friendly alien contact.

The game has a strong moral streak, and these three variables are somewhat independent: while a post singularity civilization will find it difficult to have relations with Stone age aliens, you can achieve cosmic enlightenment no matter your tech level.

There's an RPG in here somewhere, and I kinda hope Aaron Griffin wrote it already.

Instead of an ai, societies onboard struggling to improve and be the dominant force on landing.

Did you, Aaron?

Friends

Friends

Tell me I've got good follow through. That I do things well. That I should be proud of my accomplishments. That I am valued and worthwhile.

Work is getting to me, and I can't expect Dianne to do all the work.

All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there.

All these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landing there.

Water is erupting from Europa. This is happening.

Watching Dr. Who.

Watching Dr. Who.

The Doctor just said that, in space, your saliva and sweat would boil, indicating that with zero pressure water turns to a vapor.

I'm not sure that's correct.

wiki's got a fairly good article on phase diagrams:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_diagram

This goes down to 1 Pascal, at which point the boiling point i about negative sixty C.

That's low, but it's not 0 K low. But, 1 pascal is also not 0 pascal, so I'm not entirely sure.

Insights?

The most challenging game I play is Jay Treat's Strange Gravity.

The most challenging game I play is Jay Treat's Strange Gravity.

And, to be clear: It is hard. Simultaneously, everyone is expected to do character stuff and facilitator stuff.

I adore it.

Anyway. That's my star trek inspired game.

I'm thinking about some Star Wars / Dune inspired games. Any suggestions?

What I'm open to:
-- galactic politics
-- starships
-- silly physics

What I'm not open to:
-- hard mechanics. If it's more complicated than Fate or AW, it's probably not for me.
-- misogyny. If there's a woman in a chainmail bkini on the front, or women are turned into wombs to produce spice monsters in the fiction? Nope.

Jonathan Davis may have ideas. So might you!

The Roci is impressive: she can do a 20 G hard burn and keep her fragile human crew alive and conscious.

The Roci is impressive: she can do a 20 G hard burn and keep her fragile human crew alive and conscious. And she has coffee.

It remains odd to me that some company was able to build stealth vessels able to take out the Martian flagship.That says a whole lot more about the geopolitics of the system than just about anything else.

The spaceships are as much characters as Miller or Julie. Maybe more so than Holden or Alex, but distinctly less than Amos, Bobbie Draper, Chrisjen, and Fred Johnson.

Those absolutely shine.

Help me decide: what should I do for breakfast?

My dear internet

My dear internet,

I'm tired of chips and cheese. I've had a lot of dairy today. I am about a beer in.

What should I do for dinner?

I've been binging the Expanse.

I've been binging the Expanse.

I'm up to date on the books, so this is just kind of delightful.

I'm in Season 2. And fucking Fred Johnson, the Butcher of Anderson Station, just spaced a fucker without blinking.

Even Amos would blink.

My dear internet

My dear internet,

What should I do for lunch?

Yours,
William

Something i sort of want, and would sort of be afraid of.

Something i sort of want, and would sort of be afraid of.

Amazon: Hi! We saw you ordered delivery and watched a crapload of The Expanse. This is outside your normal patterns, so our guess is your wife is out of town for the weekend.

Me: ...

Amazon: Here are a selection of other purchases men whose wives are out of town often make in your area ....

Me: MY EYES!

Breakfast options, alone. You have about twenty minutes.

Breakfast options, alone. You have about twenty minutes.

I'm reading Strategy Strikes Back, which is star wars military tactcs. Basically.

I'm reading Strategy Strikes Back, which is star wars military tactcs. Basically.

It's using star wars as a story to talk about modern military capabilities. Which is cool.

One essay discusses the inappropriate size and scope of star destroyers in fighting a guerrilla war. Which seems right; you want small, nimble ships to deal with a small, nimble opponent.

This same novel also deals with the lack of insertion forces; nobody has marines. Yet, several battles depend on ground forcing blowing shit up.

So, here's the question:
-- What sort of forces are tactically and strategically useful in a galaxy far, far away?
-- Similarly, what sorts of ships are useful?
-- What sort of starfighters make sense?
-- What training do your troops need?

The basics of this weekend are set:

The basics of this weekend are set:
-- I've had ice cream.
-- I have a growler of truly delightful beer.
-- The Expanse is on.
-- I've got a 1,200 page epic fantasy novel.

Help me with the rest. In particular, what do I order for dinner?

You can go with a third option in comments.

I've got a weekend alone.

I've got a weekend alone.

I plan to read a novel by an author whose politics stink; I'll get it from the library.

I'd like to also turn on the TV for quite a bit, and get caught up on genre TV.

So: Tell me of the best science fiction and fantasy shows that are streaming. Access to the standard suite: Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, Google, and even HBO.

Pretty sure I'm in over my head at work.

Pretty sure I'm in over my head at work.

Like I've bitten off more than I know how to handle. I'm trying to hand off the right parts to the right tech team, but I keep running into organizational issues that I don't immediately know how to solve.

Is this just me?

Them: What's the level of effort?

Them: What's the level of effort?
Me: Hold on, I'm asking a dev.
Them: Why do you need to ask a developer how long something will take to dev?
Me: ...

Them: How many of these have you QCd?
Me: Before lunch today? None.
Them: WHY NOT?
Me: Because I've been in meetings with you.
Them: ...

Them: How many have you QCd end of day today?
Me: Around 20.
Them: THAT IS TOO MANY
Me: ....

Artificial, augmented intelligence exists and runs the world, yall.

Artificial, augmented intelligence exists and runs the world, yall.

There are very powerful and deep intelligence in this world. They may not be conscious of themselves, but parts of them are.

They get us up in the morning, shape where we can go, what we eat, how our elections run. They build our houses, pave our streets, and fight our wars.

And it's got a paperclip problem -- that is, it is set up to maximize on one thing.

Generally, that one thing is quarterly profits.

There are others, which maximize for different things. Often, these maximize regulation on the former, controlling them like you do your organs.

When I get back here, I'm always shocked at how different ~210 feels than ~220.

When I get back here, I'm always shocked at how different ~210 feels than ~220.

I don't notice the sluggishness increasing as I go up. I do notice the energy levels increasing as I lose weight.

Weird, bodies.

Sometime this summer, plan is 200. Maybe even 190 (haha, yeah right.).

Note:

Note:

Elsehere on the internet, Tony Lower-Basch posited that the geek social fallacies (ie, never kick anyone out) are exactly what an abuser would want in place.

He's not wrong, and he went on to further suggest that this is intentional.

I think this is true. Here's a ... let's call it a thought experiment.

You're 17. You smell bad. You don't have a lot of friends. You feel bad about yourself., (Note to 17 year old boys: You're fine. People will like you if you stop being an ass. And shower in the morning. Maybe wear clean clothes. Trust me.)

But hey, there's this cool geek name of Steven. He's got charisma out the wazoo, and is kind of the gatekeeper to the local crew. And Steven says "Come play in my White Wolf game". So, you go and these guys put up with you. You can sense most of them don't really like you and you freeze up a lot and find the game stressful more than fun, but Steven says you're in, so you're in.

There's not a lot of girls in the group, usually just Steven's girlfriends. This seems normal to you.

And, you are benefiting from GSF #1. You get to be around people. Hooray. And you're stupidly grateful.

And, why has Steven invited you around? Well ..

That's the question, right. I was never Steven. But, I do know that when I heard bad things about Steven, I didn't believe them. If those rotating girlfriends said bad things, it's not like I'd stop being Steven's friend!

Plus, I'm sure I defended him -- he'd made space for me, afterall!

See what Steven has done? Recruited unworldly unwashed geeks into the league of his defenders. Turned the innocent (ish) into his weapons.

You never quite realize this, and go off to college. Where more people enjoy being around you -- you started showering every day -- and you make similar groups to Steven's. You make groups where nobody is ever kicked out, and all sorts of shitty behavior is tolerated. You help to enforce these norms, because you remember this is how Steven's group operated.

You now create groups in the same vein as the first one that accepted you -- one where people who did bad things can benefit from geek social fallacies.

And, you do this over and over again. And not because you are shitty, but because it is the only model you ever knew. Because for a group to accept you at 17, it must be able to excuse a lot of crappy behavior.

Eventually, it is brought to your attention and you try -- often failing -- to make better groups.

The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Or, maybe I'm completely off base. What do you think?

I sometimes listen in on the osr crowd, especially as they almost say "fiction first mechanics".

I sometimes listen in on the osr crowd, especially as they almost say "fiction first mechanics".

I've learned not to poke that bear, but seeing the similarities to things I love is worthwhile itself.

From the "is it me or them? department

From the "is it me or them? department

Them: If we eliminate the problem currently in the data, then hopefully it won't happen again in the future.
Me: .... say that again.
Them: If we correct the data we have and keep the same structure and scope of work, the same problem won't occur.
Me: ....

Me: Before we push the code to production, we need both a tech check and a business check. These must be different things, and operate at different scopes.
Them: You have to do both, so it can't be different.
Me: ....

Devs: It is a miracle this works at all.
Me: It's pretty difficult, but we'll get there.
Them: This is easy, why doesn't it work?
Me: ....

Tonight on Stranger Gravity, Jay Treat's Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Larp...

Tonight on Stranger Gravity, Jay Treat's Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Larp...

On the continuing adventures of the Dauntless....

I'm playing the XO. Because the Captain is feeling low energy, the Cap goes to a Captain's summit, and leaves me as Acting Captain with a pretty straightforward mission: Courier an encrypted schematic that contains all the weaknesses on my species, to a research who is looking into my species. And don't read it.

Also: The rest of the command crew have been ordered to give me a test. This is vengeance from the Cap for a previous transgression. He laughs in my face when I ask if we'll be even.

I'm playing a symbiote. And I'm pregnant with a symbiote baby. It's complicated, and is a result of a mirror mirror episode.

ANYWAY.

Our shipboard holographic preacher is programmed to love everyone on crew. Like a mother figure. And our engineer thinks This Is Bad. Because this is a sentient who is programmed to love everyone.

So, the engineer asks the hologram if he can be removed from the crew list.

This comes to a head, with our android pilot (now acting XO) and Preacher deciding it'd be a good idea to put in more emotions into the hologram.

Acting Cap (that's me) talks to aforementioned preacher hologram and decides to run an experiment instead, and promptly fires the Chief Engineer.

We get to see what happens to the Preacher when this occurs: her love of the Chief Engineer fades (and fast).

The Chief is reinstated pretty quickly, as is the Preacher's love.

What was proven? The XO thinks one thing is proven, everyone else thinks the only thing proven is the XO is unethical.

And that's just one of the Big Command Decisions the XO screwed up last night!

Please give me some palate cleaners -- I read back issues of We Hunted the Mammoth today.

Please give me some palate cleaners -- I read back issues of We Hunted the Mammoth today. Because I was too far behind.

So ... for that reason and others, please send adorable things.

Kimberley Lam

Kimberley Lam

Research:
https://geektyrant.com/news/intense-deleted-scene-from-black-panther-features-okoye-and-wkabi-arguing-over-the-wakanda-leadership
https://geektyrant.com/news/intense-deleted-scene-from-black-panther-features-okoye-and-wkabi-arguing-over-the-wakanda-leadership

Castles of Mad King Ludvig, but instead of castles its spaceships.

I don't have a walking commute.

I don't have a walking commute.

But, on a nice day? I might have a running commute.

I want to admit something.

I want to admit something.

I did not enjoy left hand of darkness.

Does this imply I am a bad person?

I love delegation.

I love delegation.

I'd be unable to do this thing without delegation. OMG. Trusted people who take up a project and MAKE IT HAPPEN. These are the best people.