[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 4 points 5 hours ago

It's impossible to convey to people who weren't alive and politically conscious at the time how absolutely insane almost every single person in America went after 9/11. It makes the current level of bloodthirst for Palestine look tame.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 2 points 17 hours ago

Either of the spellbook merging options are just crazy powerful. Caster lich and caster angel turn you into a WMD basically instantly. Really fun.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

Levels 1-5 in 3.5 and PF1 campaigns just suck. You can't do anything fun, and it's just everyone auto-attacking until someone gets lucky. Level 17+ is rocket tag, but the middle there is chefs-kiss compared to how dumbed down 5E feels.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yeah, Wrath actually does a pretty good job ratcheting up the difficulty and sense of desperation gradually over the first bit of the game, throwing you against gradually header and harder encounters until just before it seems like it's about to become impossible, and then your mythic power comes online and you get somewhere between a significant and absolutely bonkers power spike. The encounter near the wardstones where you're up against like a bunch of CR 18s at level 6 and then go sparkly and just rip them apart is very satisfying.

Kingmaker has some crazy difficulty spikes that it just does not telegraph at all (that solo encounter with Nyrissa that I think you're talking about is a notable one), and unless you're pretty comfortable with Pathfinder or at least D&D 3.5 it's very easy to build a really bad character. Mythic powers in Wrath make it a lot more forgiving even though the encounters are technically a lot "harder" in terms of CR.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 13 points 1 day ago

Owlcat games slap in general. Kingmaker, WotR, and Rogue Trader were all fun as hell.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 11 points 1 day ago

Oh yes. 1E, to be exact. There are some tweaks, but it's closer to RAW than BG3 is to D&D 5E RAW. This is a double edged sword, as PF 1E is insanely complex if you aren't really familiar with it, so while you can make some crazy powerful builds if you know what you're doing, it's also much easier to totally ruin your character than it is in BG3. The game will happily let you make absolutely terrible choices with basically no warning, and the first act in particular can be hard.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 55 points 2 days ago

The best part is she absolutely will not be able to help herself, and won't comply. I hope Imane takes all her money.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

BRUNO'S COUNTRY CLUB LLC

lmao

is this where they put the piggies up?

When they're in town, yeah (it's the motel in Gerlach). We also have to build, staff, and maintain a full compound on playa for them to use, complete with a 24 hour/day on-call chef. It's so fucking insane.

100% agree on the general criticism of non-profits. Burning Man isn't uniquely bad, but it's still a dog shit model for doing things.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 8 points 4 days ago

Here's the 2022 Form 990: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/452638273/202313179349309051/full. Just permitting and fees are at about $4.5 million. Most of the stuff that falls under "wages" is also not to BMP employees, but rather to law enforcement, emergency services (we also run a full service hospital that does not change for any services), airport, and sanitation (loooots of porto-potty servicing). The costs on all those things has gone up since 2022 also; there's been an ongoing lawsuit between the org and the Federal government for charging us so much with basically no explanation.

This will be my 20th year going, and I'm in a leadership position on the volunteer side of things. I definitely have a lot of criticism of the organization (and the event), but financial mismanagement isn't really one of them. They pay the executive staff on the low side of comparably sized 501c3 orgs, especially given the office location in SF. I think Marian is pretty out of touch with the ordinary burner, but she's not really getting rich off of it.

Burning Man is definitely a problematic fave of mine, but I do think it still has a lot of great things about it. Happy to answer questions as best I can without going into enough detail to ID me specifically.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 11 points 4 days ago

That's what we're all hoping.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 49 points 5 days ago

Rowling absolutely loves using libel lawsuits to shut down criticism of her. Love to see it turned back against her.

102
Harris picks Walz for VP (www.newsweek.com)

I was sure it was going to be professional genocide ghoul Shapiro. Color me surprised.

60

In 2023, the CO2 growth rate was 3.37 +/- 0.11 ppm at Mauna Loa, 86% above the previous year, and hitting a record high since observations began in 1958, while global fossil fuel CO2 emissions only increased by 0.6 +/- 0.5%. This implies an unprecedented weakening of land and ocean sinks, and raises the question of where and why this reduction happened.

Despite the incredible, unprecedented work of The Most Progressive President of Our Lifetime in the US, global carbon emissions continue to accelerate. However, in general carbon that's introduced into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels doesn't always just stay there; in fact, most of the time most of that carbon gets absorbed by one or another carbon sink as part of normal geosystemic processes. These sinks include getting sucked up by plants as part of photosynthesis, dissolving into the ocean to marginally raise its pH (mostly this one), or reacting with rocks on the surface to from new minerals. The upshot is that a lot of the warming potential of the fossil fuels we've been burning has been averted by the natural carbon cycle absorbing much of our collective waste.

This natural absorption showed an alarming drop off in 2023, even as carbon emissions continued to rise. This is very, very bad and is setting us up for warning and other climate change impacts that may happen far in advance of what our models predicted--decades instead of centuries.

99
Today, We're all MAGA (web.archive.org)

Liberals not being total losers challenge (difficulty: impossible)

77

Loser energy at levels never thought possible before

51
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by Philosoraptor@hexbear.net to c/earth@hexbear.net

Friend of mine that lives in Gerlach got it at about 11 last night. Crazy that it made it this far south.

43
submitted 3 months ago by Philosoraptor@hexbear.net to c/chat@hexbear.net

The kids are alright.

29

There's one overwhelmingly common mistake that people make about enshittification: assuming that the contagion is the result of the Great Forces of History, or that it is the inevitable end-point of any kind of for-profit online world.

In other words, they class enshittification as an ideological phenomenon, rather than as a material phenomenon. Corporate leaders have always felt the impulse to enshittify their offerings, shifting value from end users, business customers and their own workers to their shareholders. The decades of largely enshittification-free online services were not the product of corporate leaders with better ideas or purer hearts. Those years were the result of constraints on the mediocre sociopaths who would trade our wellbeing and happiness for their own, constraints that forced them to act better than they do today, even if the were not any better.

Corporate leaders' moments of good leadership didn't come from morals, they came from fear.

72

Politicians are terrified of the protests, but they are even more terrified by the prospect that the protests could continue past the end of the school year, spilling over the bounds of the campus and into a long, hot, summer. It is the responsibility of anyone trying to stop this genocide to ensure that their nightmare becomes a reality.

61
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by Philosoraptor@hexbear.net to c/the_dunk_tank@hexbear.net

Some choice bits:

[A] huge win would be a Gray Pride Parade with 50,000 Grays, that would be massive. That would start, to say: "Whose streets? Our streets!" You have the AI Flying Spaghetti Monster. You have the Bitcoin parade. You have the drones flying overhead in formation ... You have bubbling genetic experiments on beakers. You have the laser eyes, you know, Bitcoin maximalist ... You have the police at the Gray Pride Parade. They're flying the...drones, they are there and, ideally, you know, you even design the police uniforms.

Every week ... ideally every week, have a policeman's banquet. Okay, all Gray sympathetic policemen are allowed to come to this banquet. Those that are not very sympathetic, you do need to filter you don't just because there's some sort of some policemen who are full Soviets, right?

Take total control of your neighborhood. Push out all Blues. Tell them they're as unwelcome as ... just as Blues ethnically cleanse me out of San Francisco, push out all blues. And then you'll easily win.

Reds should be welcomed there and people should wear their tribal colors. No Blues should be welcomed there. And in addition to celebrating celebrating Gray and celebrating Red, you should have movies shown about Blue abuses. For example, there's this guy who's addicted to drugs, who was addicted to drugs he posts on Twitter about how the Blue government helped him get addicted to drugs. You should have an interview with him. There should be lots of stories about what Blues are doing that is bad.

88

If you tried to put this in a satire, people would think it was too much.

19
Dan Dennett has died (dailynous.com)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by Philosoraptor@hexbear.net to c/philosophy@hexbear.net

He was controversial, but he was in my opinion one of the best all-around living philosophers. He was enormously influential on my own thinking, as well as kind and patient every time I met him. Enormously influential, and a big loss to the discipline.

There is no philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage was taken on board without examination.

26
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by Philosoraptor@hexbear.net to c/the_dunk_tank@hexbear.net

Mr. Musk, in a black T-shirt and moto jacket, weighed in on the subject of the future, too.

“I think we’re currently teaching kids in school to hate America or to question whether America is good,” Mr. Musk said, reflecting on something he feels society is doing right now that will negatively affect the years to come.

“There’s a lot of focus on all things America does wrong, but not enough on what America has done, both currently and historically,” he continued. “Which then causes people to lose faith in America. And then, I don’t know, we might fracture as a society and no longer be the United States of America.”

freedom-hater

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Philosoraptor

joined 4 years ago