Thursday, November 13, 2014

holy wow.


holy wow.

Originally shared by Shen Ye

Damn, the calculations involved must have been insane.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

well, Elysium is pretty bad. Wish I'd known.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

This is fantastic: https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29bab88d50

This is fantastic: https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29bab88d50

Effectively, arguing that the Federation has such a large minimum basic income that it isn't even income anymore. This makes sense. Can we have a MBI now?

If we imagine post-scarcity as an interval from (0,1), with the federation at around the half-way mark ... 

Then, every society can be construed to partake of post-scarcity in some limited fashion. We've always had more than enough air, and enough land. 

Now we have more than enough food, for some definition of food. So, we're getting there. The question is not, if we should ensure a minimum standard of living -- society does by definition -- but, rather, what should it be?
https://medium.com/@RickWebb/the-economics-of-star-trek-29bab88d50

Monday, October 20, 2014

I am very tempted to do a ghost-busters themed RPG using Monster of the Week.

I am very tempted to do a ghost-busters themed RPG using Monster of the Week. I'm thinking a new franchise, just opening.

I'm going to do a little hacking:
-- Instead of stats, use advantage. and disadvantage That is, whenever a stat is positive and you'd use it, take the best 2 of 3d6.

-- More importantly, I need money as pressure. I don't want this to just be fictional positioning. I want to encourage the scene from the original wherein the team is eating Chinese food, and Ray announces that "this magnificent feast represents the last of the petty cash". Maybe that's as easy as a pool of dice to give bonuses to future rolls, which we'll call "cash". 

-- It'll be great to see the overarching organization after a while. Have Ray or Egon show up and help out the team. Or, need their help.

tl;dr - I'm looking into theming MoTW for Ghostbusters. Any notion how to model economic pressure?

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Uber, my favorite way to get places that don't have metro, received an "F" from the BBB for non-responsiveness to 39...

Uber, my favorite way to get places that don't have metro, received an "F" from the BBB for non-responsiveness to 39 complaints filed with the BBB. Lyft also got an F, for a smaller number of non-responded to complaints.

Apparently an F from the BBB doesn't mean what I think it means. 

I would expect their ratings to be based on how good a company is to its customers, but apparently an F can happen from simply ignoring the BBB. Which makes their ratings kind of useless.

Meanwhile, Red Top of Arlington has an A-, with the only negative listed being that BBB does not have a lot of information on the business.

The last time I called (using a phone!) a taxi, it took 20 minutes to get to my door -- and I live a 5 minute walk from a taxi stand. Uber, on the other hand, is there within 5 minutes. Taxis require that I have cash, and deal with tipping. Uber ... doesn't.

Without getting into the argument on taxies versus Uber (which is, to me, rather obvious anyway), the BBB's rating service looks perfectly useless. Which makes sense -- they act as gatekeepers, and are stuck in an older model.

Question is, with what do we replace the BBB as it becomes less useful?

There is no argument nor discussion: They were lost weeks ago.

Originally shared by Alexander Newman

There is no argument nor discussion: They were lost weeks ago.