tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90061882684672554242024-02-21T19:05:15.880+11:00Verbal IntercourseDid you think it wasn't all about sex?Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.comBlogger269125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-40284101481995171982017-04-16T20:11:00.003+10:002017-04-16T20:11:50.177+10:00I moved my blog...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
...to Wordpress.<br />
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The new url is <a href="http://verbalintercourse.blog/">http://verbalintercourse.blog/</a>. </div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-40795411944699483502017-03-10T01:27:00.000+11:002017-03-10T01:27:01.121+11:00Advertising<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Imagine that a product exists, maybe a tool, maybe an entertainment product, that is just perfect for you. It's the thing you didn't realise you'd been waiting your whole life for. But you don't know about it.</div>
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In an ideal version of reality, how do you want the sellers of this product to let you know that it exists and you can buy one?</div>
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I guess the flip side to this question is; how do you ever know someone wants to hear what you have to say? Isn't society one big collection of unsolicited messages?<br />
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<i>Do the ants in the grass understand what the man's Volvo is?</i></div>
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<i>Do they know you can buy Pepsi in aluminum or glass?</i></div>
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Advertising is art with an ulterior motive for existing. As long as we're not being openly lied to, I don't think it's bad exactly, but in a world where there are <i>important </i>things to do, I would suggest it's probably doing more harm than good.</div>
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Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-1075180470138585852017-03-03T12:23:00.000+11:002017-03-11T11:02:27.825+11:00Your creators<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I recently pledged $1 per month to a youtube channel that redubs old episodes of the pokemon cartoon to change the plot and characters to something completely different. It's not Ibsen, but it makes me laugh a lot, enough that I still feel like I'm kind of ripping them off by only giving a dollar a month.</div>
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But they sent me this nice email with the heading "Thank you for supporting your creators!" which I thought was kind of an amazing way to phrase it. I've never equated the act of creating something with the idea of "my" creators, but it's kind of the same thing. I'm the sum of all my experiences, so if some of those experiences were designed by other people, in a way that places those people among my creators.</div>
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I watched an interview with Ashly Burch from the Hey Ash Watcha Playin series of internet videos, and apparently she's playing the hero in some new big budget open world game that came out recently. She mentioned the female Commander Shepherd from Mass Effect as one of her inspirations, which reminded me of that one time when I learned from Saints Row 3 that all you need to do to write women well is write them as men and swap out the model for a female one.</div>
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I'm reminded of Jack Nicholson's character from As Good As It Gets. When I was a teenager my mum took me to see it at the cinema, and I don't think thirteen year-old me understood half of it, but it ended up sweeping the oscars. Anyway the point is his character's talent is writing romance novels, which is something that comes across in no aspect of his personal attitude. When a woman asks him how he's able to write women so well he responds; "I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability."</div>
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It's no struggle for a man to fully empathise with a woman, all he has to do is forget that he wants to have sex with her.</div>
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Attractive people are blinding in a way. I'm not sure there is a better way of saying it. The question becomes whether to embrace this higher imperative or suppress it, and try to shield your eyes.</div>
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Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-72894393222914284772017-03-01T23:25:00.000+11:002017-03-01T23:25:01.413+11:00On INSIDE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
HOLY SHIT THAT WAS AMAZING I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY MAKE VIDEO GAMES THIS GOOD.</div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-13090856337777311832017-03-01T12:56:00.000+11:002017-03-11T11:09:14.001+11:00Owlboy, Roguelikes, and recreational mathematics.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>"Don't they teach recreational mathematics any more?"</i></div>
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I haven't stopped playing video games. Just WoW.</div>
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Recently I played through a great mid-price indie game ($25 is mid-price, right?) called Owlboy. It felt like a SuperNES-era zelda game, all exploration and adventuring. The amazing thing that this game does is so simple it seems dumb it hasn't been done before. It's a metroidvania-style platforming game but instead of platform jumping you just fly.</div>
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Owlboy is the most <i>vertical</i> game I've ever played. Imagine zelda-style world map exploration, but you just keep flying up, and up, and up and up and up. The music changes as you keep moving up, into and through a seemingly endless sky full of floating islands; towns, dungeons, friends, enemies, secrets. And you collect coins and unlock additional weapons and buy upgrades and eat vegetables to regain health.</div>
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It's got a pretty decent Final Fantasy style story to it too. I'm generally opposed to unskippable story scenes in games, but I didn't mind these ones too much. (For the record I thought The Stanley Parable was pretty cool, and I didn't bother to "play" Dear Esther.)</div>
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More important than any told story Owlboy has <i>atmosphere</i>.</div>
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And now I've played through it all twice and I'm bored with it. If only there was a way to somehow generate unique gameplay situations every time you played, he said, awkwardly segueing.</div>
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I played a bit of The Binding of Isaac, quite a bit of Spelunky, and a metric fuckton of Darkest Dungeon.</div>
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I love the roguelike genre. The inability to completely control your environment creates a need to play to 100% of any potential advantages, and to weigh every choice carefully using incomplete information.</div>
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I see it in a way as a simulation of life. Failure may be inevitable, but every choice matters. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, so the simplest route to success is generally the best one.</div>
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The other game I've been playing is Hearthstone, which is based on Magic, which on balance probably deserves its utterly generic name. I mean since it literally invented the genre.</div>
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Magic is a competitive game played with two (or more) people. The gameplay is based on generating interesting math problems and game theory style psychology. From a pool of hundreds of cards, players create a deck from which they draw cards at random and use the unique functions of these cards to try to win the game.</div>
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A major feature of Magic is that it's impossible to know what cards your opponent has or what cards you will draw next, making it effectively a roguelike game-- each player weighing their choices using incomplete information.</div>
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Magic is not a game for people who are bad at losing. It will teach you that control is an illusion, that there is no status without challenge, and that in any complex system incredible things will <i>always</i> happen.</div>
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Now if you'll excuse me, I've just learned about and bought and downloaded a follow up to Limbo called INSIDE. It looks pretty cool.</div>
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Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-13983289385670643972017-02-24T02:14:00.002+11:002017-02-24T02:42:08.258+11:00The precipice<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span>These are interesting times. We were so busy trying to break the glass ceiling we didn't notice how unstable our footing had become.</span></div>
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<span>I wonder whether this situation can't end positively. Nobody was expecting Hillary to be anything but a business as usual politician from a well known brand who happened to be female. How many more years could we have pretended that democracy was working, had she been elected? Now we have little choice but to acknowledge the system is broken.</span></div>
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<span>It's only at the precipice that we change.</span></div>
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Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-63147806265500152672017-02-14T23:48:00.000+11:002017-02-14T23:48:03.888+11:00Implicit commitment<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span>Is it insensitive to say to your partner that you don't consider the relationship to be a "forever" thing?</span></div>
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<span>I mean marriage is the only occasion when this promise is <i>explicitly</i> made. But I guess what I'm trying to get at here is how common this assumption of forever is with people, even in the very earliest stages of coupling. I've felt it multiple times in my life-- I could never help it. And my heart broke the time when I realised that my best friend and partner of five years felt it, and I didn't.</span></div>
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<span>Relationships are pretty much defined by the amount of yourself that you are willing to share; with the remainder of the "person" you're seen as being made up of unconscious assumptions and extrapolations based on what will be by definition that person's most impressive side.</span></div>
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<span>lol I just made a typo at the end of that last paragraph. Instead of side I typed "size". Then I giggled because it was totally a Freudian slip.</span></div>
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<span>I guess the reason I'm typing all of this is because I'm finding myself having to answer these questions as I consider how to approach a co-worker at my new job with whom there is a mutual attraction.</span></div>
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<span>I find myself resisting the idea of a committed relationship, because I know that's not a promise I can make in good conscience. But I really miss having a intimate friend, and sex has been in my experience the easiest path to forming an intimate relationship.</span></div>
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<span>And also I really would like to have sex with her.</span></div>
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<span>What I worry is that she might consider sex to be something requiring a committed relationship; and that I will agree to it just because I want to have sex. And that would be <i>wrong</i>.</span></div>
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<span>So I find myself pondering just how committed to the relationship I would have to be in order to not implicitly promise anything I'm not capable of following through on.</span></div>
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Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-29342582234251298022017-02-14T01:57:00.000+11:002017-02-14T01:57:01.298+11:00On porn<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Once you get good at reading body language, pornography takes on a whole new dimension.</div>
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There is <i>no</i> neutral way to have sex. A neutral attitude is in itself a statement on the sex-- because sex is <i>not supposed to be neutral</i>. Sex is the quintessential human experience.<br />
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It is impossible to have sex without revealing some part of yourself, even if it's a fake part. And then the persuasiveness of your facade will depend entirely on your partner's perception of you. Or in the case of pornography, the perception of the viewer.</div>
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Of course a really good actor can always pretend convincingly... But this is porn we're talking about. There are no good actors.</div>
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Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-57138490839256252692017-02-08T16:55:00.000+11:002017-02-08T16:55:13.622+11:00A short post<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It was on the tip of everyone's tongue, Trump just gave it a name.<br />
<br />They're the middle children of history. No purpose or place. Their Great War is a spiritual war. Their Great Depression is their lives. They were raised on television to believe they could be millionaires and movie stars and rock gods. But they wont. They are slowly learning that fact. And they are very, very pissed off.<br />
<br />The first rule of white club is you don't talk about white club.<br />
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Imagination is the concept art for potential realities. We can only do the things that we have figured out how to do. We can only plan for the things that we imagine are possible. The world is a complicated place, and we are all prone to magical thinking when reality is beyond our comprehension.<br />
<br />The further we stretch our knowledge the shorter the distance to a mistake.<br />
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People always deserve a second chance. Most
people deserve a third chance. Close friends deserve fourth chances,
fifth chances, sixth, seventh, as many as you can count.<br />
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If you <i>lose count</i> though, maybe it's time to move on.</div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-37636166886273549512017-01-06T01:13:00.000+11:002017-01-06T01:13:01.772+11:00That shouldn't matter.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I want a T-shirt with a picture of Abed from Community and my favourite quote "That shouldn't matter."</div>
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Or another great choice is "I prefer the term <i>homage</i>."</div>
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In a way those two sayings represent the boundaries of Abed's worldview; on one side are the things he chooses to dismiss as objectively pointless, and on the other are the objectively pointless things that he chooses to invest his life into.</div>
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We can make better decisions when we understand how our decisions affect the world. But the world is fucking complicated. Nobody can be expected to understand all of it. What people need is "shortcuts" that skip the boring details that would only waste space in our brains.</div>
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When someone tells us something that we don't understand to the point of self-evidency we are forced to make a choice; either to elucidate our lack of understanding, or to make a shortcut by simply accepting it as true based on the authority of the speaker.</div>
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When someone presents as an authority and what they are saying doesn't seem obviously wrong, people will accept their "truth shortcuts" without feeling the need to question them too thoroughly. And so when the world isn't understandable we accept conspiracy theories and media narratives and the obfuscation of inconvenient facts and Donald Trump becomes president.</div>
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People need shortcuts to understanding. The media's obligation as an authority should be to make sure that its narrative shortcuts are as true as possible. Which brings me to Russell Brand.</div>
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In The Trews (a portmanteau of True and News) on Youtube, Russell Brand presents his own narrative of what's going on in the world, in what I perceive as simple and self-evident language. I feel comfortable accepting his truths because he has impressed on me again and again how keenly he is able to understand the complexities of our society, while maintaining an optimistic and empathetic worldview. We need more people who can chop up difficult-to-understand truths into simpler self-evident ideas.</div>
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But what about the people who have an excuse to disbelieve everything Russell Brand says? He is after all, a filthy hippie lefty, prattling on about peace and love while everyone already knows that it's really <i>other people</i> to blame for the world sucking so much.</div>
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Honestly if I knew how to communicate with that kind of archetype I'd be out there doing it instead of sitting at home typing at my computer.</div>
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Truth isn't enough to convince people; this is the hardest lesson to be learned by the hippie generation. "All you need is love" is not enough. Plenty of us can and will choose to reject anything which challenges our worldview. We need to go further; we need to find ways to make our truth accessible to the many different ways that ordinary people understand the world.<br />
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I also think it's interesting to notice how consistently our comedians have taken the lead in advancing social narratives in a positive direction. I've understood for a while now that humour is a function of social intelligence. It's a medium that relies very heavily on effective communication, and is by definition alienating when it fails.</div>
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Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-52294380199893446442016-07-06T08:53:00.001+10:002016-07-06T09:12:37.090+10:00Sexism, society, and political superheroes.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Could it be that younger women tend to be smarter because they have an easy way of socialising with older men?<br />
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I swear this idea isn't coming out of a sexist interpretation of reality; our society is literally sexist in this way. Because men have the majority of power, what they value in sexuality becomes de facto valuable to the society. I can easily imagine that in a female-dominated society we'd see a lot more twinks running around and serving as eye candy for the women in charge. But then those same young men would probably have to work twice as hard to be "taken seriously" in a world where the powerful are virtually blinded by their sexuality.<br />
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Maybe the lesson here is: women with power should be allowed to get theirs. Sex makes the individual more powerful because of the relationship it creates. But more than that, sex equalises people. We're all the same when we're naked and rubbing against each other.<br />
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My two favourite movies recently have been X-Men Apocalypse and Captain America Civil War. I think both of these films are spectacular achievements; the epitome of what superhero movies are and should be in 2016. JJ Abrams wishes he could do what Bryan Singer or the Russo brothers can do.<br />
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I understand it's an autistic thing; watching the same movie over and over. We easily obsess over anything complex enough that we can continue to learn from it. Video games are the same. Give me a complex system and I will learn the fuck out of it until I'm satisfied I have an effective grasp of the subject. Then I'll get bored until I find the next interesting thing.<br />
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Civil War is about government oversight and the rights of the individual to wield power. Captain America becomes a criminal because the government is more concerned with controlling him than trusting in his goodness. Good people end up at war with each other because they can't agree on what a peaceful society should look like. Cough congress.<br />
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X-Men Apocalypse is about extremism and the radicalisation of good people. Apocalypse is a terrorist.<br />
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Magneto's story is the central narrative in my opinion. He tries to live as a human but his compassion for others ends up "outing" him, leading to his society turning on him and creating the situation where Apocalypse was his only ally. Similarly with Apocalypse's generals, all powerful but socially downtrodden people granted self-actualisation simply by having a cause, any cause, to put their extraordinary abilities into.<br />
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Also I think some of the mutants might be gay.<br />
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But I still feel like both of these movies have story threads that I've yet to pick up on. I'll probably watch them a few times more at least before I get bored.<br />
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If anyone reading this has anything to add I'm interested in hearing it.</div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-74319602131619859622016-05-21T10:08:00.000+10:002016-05-21T10:08:32.433+10:00I'll just be ice, floating through space, like a comet.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I got around to reactivating my WoW subscription for 50k of my gold. Seems like our inflation is finally back. Well done on that guys. It explains their decision last year when the price was 20k to restrict the amount of time you can buy to a year's worth.<br /><br />I'm playing a Shaman again, just doing some levelling, that being the only type of content that is not repetitive as fuck. I mean sure I've done it all before, but only about a dozen times unlike everything in the current endgame content which is probably closer to three or four times that number.<br /><br />I wonder how typical this pattern of activity is among WoW players. Does this make me more "casual" or more "hardcore"? Or do we all already know how meaningless those words have become.<br /><br />When I get enthusiastic about a class I always start thinking about playing it in a competitive raid. But since every single thing that can be changed in the next expansion is being changed in the next expansion -- fucking <i>again </i>-- I must remind myself that the game I'm currently playing will only sort-of exist a few months from now, and again realise that nothing actually matters because not even the creators of this world seem to give a flying fuck about its ongoing consistency.<br /><br />I just want to feel like I can care about something again without having to wonder whether anyone else does.</div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-18890317169892570242016-04-18T15:12:00.000+10:002016-04-18T15:55:20.221+10:00Life is a joke, so make sure you're in on it.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Crossing the line. Breaking the barrier. This is powerful.
You have boundaries to what you see yourself as capable of. When you
break one of these barriers, you grow as a person.<br />
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meaningfully break a barrier is probably one of those things that gets
progressively harder to achieve the more space one inhabits within ones
understood universe. There must be a decision to be made about whether
to focus on growing yourself or growing the size your universe.</div>
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I feel like I learn more about humans from watching their mating behaviour than from anything else. </div>
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It's the same joke over and over. The joke was that we thought it wasn't all about sex. </div>
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I think I figured out the meaning of the female orgasm. It's meaningless. Pleasure for pleasure's sake. They can do it as much or as little as they feel like. Men can make no claim to this lack of function. All we do must serve the one true purpose. We live to die. Or to kill. Or to be the one that survives? We um, we go home and fuck the prom queen. Yeah, that sounds right.</div>
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This is the most fundamental difference between women and men; the climax. Freedom and responsibility. Progress and conservatism. Pointlessness and Death. Life is the thing that creates space in between these universal concepts. The fact that space exists is less interesting than the shapes that the space creates.<br />
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People say women are less funny than men. Well, they aren't. Except for that in reality they are. But you have to understand that in a historical context blah blah blah see this is why; in a universe where nothing exists independent of context, everything is connected with everything else, except for in the ways that they aren't.<br />
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That was the punchline.</div>
</div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-45475641809529640352016-02-10T02:35:00.000+11:002016-02-10T02:35:06.669+11:00On anuses<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Many if not most people dislike or are ashamed of their anuses.<br />
<br />
We associate them with shit, which at first glance seems fair enough, but also misses the point completely. That shit doesn't come from your anus, it comes from you. That shit is you. It's all the useless garbage you consumed without realising it was garbage, and which would literally kill you if your body couldn't shit it out.<br />
<br />
Your anus does exactly the opposite of what you think it does. Your anus keeps your shit in. Every single one of us has shit inside us right now. Your anus exists to give you the ability to keep it to yourself.<br />
<br />
Have you ever seen a fish shit? They make do with a very simple cloaca. They eat food, get whatever combination of matter they use to fuel themselves out of it, and the rest comes almost immediately out the other end in a long translucent trail. And it just becomes part of the water.<br />
<br />
Anyone who's ever dealt with aquariums will tell you the nitrogen levels in the water need to be maintained. What they're talking about is that aquarium fish literally swim in their own shit, and it will literally kill them if they stay in the same water for too long.<br />
<br />
(It's worth pointing out that this fish problem I'm describing is actually caused by us, ignorantly confining a living being in an environment which does not naturally meet its needs.)<br />
<br />
Humans are more evolved than fish; we have anuses. We have the ability to not leave an indiscriminate trail of shit behind us as we move through life. We manage our own shit. We keep it to ourselves, and everywhere you go you will find special rooms for dealing with it in private. Have you ever noticed that the (vastly underappreciated) human need for selective privacy is also served by these rooms? We use them to manage our own shit.<br />
<br />
Because social stigma is more damaging than anyone who practices it realises, and the person who can believe that you don't shit will probably never notice you doing it. You have your anus to thank for that.<br />
<br />
<br />
Today's song is from 1996, Frenzal Rhomb's Punch in the Face.<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbHdDGdKS-8<br />
<br /></div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-30832299772311610192016-02-08T13:34:00.000+11:002016-02-08T20:16:29.629+11:00That which can be explained by incompetence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
The only thing that makes you wrong is thinking you're right.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
People seem unable to accept how little control they have over the world around them. We invent so many insane childish rules just to resolve reality into some semblance of understandability. Reality will prove over and over and over until the end of time that nobody is immune to ignorance.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Pride precedes the fall. It doesn't matter how much is at stake or how many people are relying on your decision. Sometimes you will fail. Sometimes you will fail in a way that nobody could possibly have anticipated. You might not understand why you failed. Maybe nobody will ever know why.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The universe is hard enough to understand that we often see genius in an improbable guess, once the guess has been proven correct. Guess right twice in a row and some people might start to think you're magic. Guess right enough times and you might even fool yourself into thinking you're magic.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Just try not to be wrong. Ever.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Because in the end we have only ourselves to blame for ever trusting someone who was in hindsight so clearly and <i>deliberately </i>wrong. People really need to learn to not be wrong so much of the time.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Today's song is Time Cube by Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives</div>
<div>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcO10Fim0C8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmsXsT0kbbg</a></div>
</div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-82326688669677791112016-01-26T02:35:00.000+11:002016-01-26T02:35:03.879+11:00I hate Valor<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's a grind. It's busy work. It's a cheap way to get people to play more. It's a slapdash points system the only purpose of which is to purchase a <i>different kind</i> of points.<br /><br />In effect, each character now needs to "unlock" 140 of the ilevels on their gear set. You get 6 ilevels worth of points for each Mythic dungeon you do, but you can only use them in chunks of 5.<br /><br />I think other types of gameplay probably give you points too but I don't know what they are. Is the Raid Finder still a thing? I mean the thing everyone used to call "LFR" with such regularity that even Blizzard PR kept forgetting it was called anything else.<br /><br />ilevel unlocking is also an effective nerf to offspec roles, (depending on your level of dedication) which pisses me off only slightly less than the first reason.</div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-31818910106944881132016-01-08T11:45:00.003+11:002016-01-08T11:45:54.831+11:00Forsaken spec<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I used my boost on a Forsaken Hunter. I don't know if I'll end up doing any raiding, but I'm having fun running around Tanaan in greens never getting hit because Hunters are just that easy to play.<br /><br />I'm also enjoying Survival before they remove the spec completely and attach the name to some new melee spec, which I suppose will probably make some attempt at thematic consistency to justify removing the other spec. I thought we didn't care about classes all having exactly three specs now? Why are hunters losing a ranged spec when they don't need to?<br /><br />Maybe Blizzard is simply unable to tell an unbiased truth any more. Corporations, like a horny male on a date, always seem so very <i>embarrassed</i> to admit what everyone already knows their true purpose is.<br /><br />Anyway if it's anyone's fault, blame those damn shareholders for forcing all the poor billion-dollar corporations to make compromises in the of name their selfish short term gains, which by coincidence happen to also be the corporation's short term gains.</div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-87905736110261423792015-11-25T09:28:00.002+11:002015-11-25T09:35:50.922+11:00Shamanin...ing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I rolled another Shaman and before I knew it she was level 50. I think it must be my second favourite class after monk. Now that I think about it those are the only two classes I got to 100 this expansion.<br />
<br />
It's weird to realise you don't really understand what you like.<br />
<br />
Shaman's great though. For a while Enhancement was my main raiding spec, wayy back in Icecrown. Only melee class I ever took as a "main" at any point. I used to love all the hybrid support stuff you could do, and then suddenly in Cata couldn't do.<br />
<br />
Another two expansions worth of changes later, I feel like I'm playing the same spec again. Maybe all a melee class needs to be brilliant is a couple of extra support spells you can cast while the enemy is (and they <i>will be </i>at some point) out of melee range. Enhancement seems designed to grant you with a regular supply of free GCDs that you can spend on whatever OP Shaman BS you feel like at the time.<br />
<br />
Ironcially reading about all the shitty-sounding changes Mistweavers are getting in the next expansion made me want to play Mistweaver, so I healed through all the Mythics (wat how did they ruin that word already) this week to partially upgrade the toon I still eventually hope to get back into a regular raiding gig. Item levels just got bumped up by 3 per week for the next three weeks? Something like that anyway. It's like a content nerf, but this time you need exactly 20 people to play the next level.<br />
<br />
<i>Exactly </i>20.<br />
<br />
19 is inadequate. 21 is of course absurd. </div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-61747684365657057242015-11-22T19:50:00.000+11:002015-11-22T19:52:44.866+11:00I'm still angry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Currencies. I swear to god these days WoW has more useless esoteric currencies than a fucking pay to win mobile phone game.<br />
<br />
item. fucking. levels. Who needs content when you can grind one kind of points to spend on a different kind
of points? At this rate they wont have to make new raids ever again and we can
just all upgrade our gear forever through endless repetitive dungeons and
everyone will be happy.<br />
<br />
Beta. It's an unfinished game. Stop pretending that you're doing us a favour by having us test it for you.<br />
<br />
Even more radical class overhauls. Are we even "fixing" things now? I mean these aren't just changes for change's sake right? Right..?<br />
<br />
I heard they are getting rid of Mistweaver melee
healing. Seems like a logical decision considering nobody uses it these
days. Although the reason for that might have less to do with player
interest and more to do with the way they didn't bother making it
anything close to viable this expansion. Is that a self-fulfilling
prophecy or was it a deliberate strategy?<br />
<br />
Why in the distended anus of god fucking mother shitting christ are they giving hunters a melee spec? Out of <i>any</i> class? Not Mages? Not Warlocks, who actually had some melee stuff back in the day, not to mention that huge beefy demon form? Of <i>all </i>the competing development priorities that these bitches keep whining about, what other considerations were so bad that a <i>melee hunter</i> ended up seeming like a good idea in comparison.<br />
<br />
What isn't Blizzard telling us about melee that makes it so much more important than ranged? Every single new class has been pure melee (unless you count healing as ranged-- I don't) and now we're actually <i>losing </i>ranged specs? What's going on?</div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-42656576384875383212015-11-13T08:37:00.000+11:002015-11-13T08:42:23.327+11:00some ranting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Dear Blizzard, please stop hard-selling me on an expansion that I wont be able to play for a year. It's just cruel.<br />
<br />
Last week I bought a really expensive mount that also came with a level 100 character boost. How many god damn times do these guys expect me to run the same raids, upgrade the same garrison, level the same followers, collect the same daily resources. I only ever play one out of the four 100s I have already.<br />
<br />
So I guess I'll do what I did last time and save it until the expansion becomes playable, which usually happens a week or two after the release date. Maybe I can use it on that new class oh wait... Would they even let me boost a demon hunter from level 95 to 100?<br />
<br />
But you know what I fucking would pay extra for? A level 1 demon hunter, that I can actually play the <i>majority</i> of the game with. Yes I fucking get today that the whole game and all its players are completely focused on endgame and nobody gives a shit. I do though. I give a shit.<br />
<br />
<br />
I really need to find me a proper guild. This game isn't doing it for me as a solo experience any more.<br />
<br />
I rolled another shaman, the fourth one by my count. Because at least while you're leveling there's a variety of environments and your power progression is rapid and noticeable. Your gameplay changes over time as you gain new abilities. And unlike the endgame you actually feel like you're playing a small character in a massive world. My main toon is practically a god at this point when it comes to solo content.<br />
<br />
And I think.... I think I just don't like Draenor very much. Not the expansion, the continent. The whole place feels very sterile, like it's a playground covered in soft foam so nobody could possibly hurt themselves. Is that what flying has done? I don't remember feeling this way before. The game is still great, but somehow the world doesn't seem compelling any more.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-36688452849354415802015-11-04T14:07:00.000+11:002015-11-04T14:13:43.978+11:00On abortion owls<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I was feeling depressed so I decided to craft some more golden cards for my Hearthstone paladin rush deck that I've been playing since not long after my last post.<br />
<br />
It's this one: http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/276624-s16-legendary-aggro-paladin<br />
<br />
But the one change I make is I drop the 1-mana pirate and have one more Abortion Owl because I think silence is just so useful in so many situations and the most common is stopping a Deathrattle from spawning additional minions-- effectively you're killing a minion that doesn't exist yet. You're aborting it.<br />
<br />
So I crafted two golden owls. You can see the night sky rotating behind them and holy shit their fucking eyes glow. Evil fucking eye glow, which I guess is appropriate for a bird who performs non-consensual abortions as a combat tactic. And then it hit me. South Park Woodland Critter Christmas Hail Satan! He's an evil critter that performs abortions! Does anyone else remember that thing? Remember South Park? From the 90s..? Poor little feller.<br />
<br />
But anyway, as I wrote this (more or less) I literally just won a game by silencing my opponent's last ditch tank, propelling me into a win streak. I think silences are really strong in the meta right now. Most decks these days feature some kind of deathrattle or inspire or other trigger that ramps or provides some other critical advantage.<br />
<br />
Um, but yeah. I haven't played wow since I moved house and neglected to tell my guild that I couldn't make the raids that week and they booted me and I just got down on the game.<br />
<br />
I've been playing this indie-ish RPG that I found on Steam called Darkest Dungeon. It's roguelike and really mathy and I can barely progress and I fucking love it. The positioning mechanic is really interesting, and as I say that I realise it probably qualifies for nerdiest thing said ever. I swear to god positioning is fucking interesting motherfucker. Didn't you ever play Kwirk? Or like, um, Boxxle? <br />
<br />
I think I'm out of things to say.<br />
<br />
Does anyone read this?</div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-83600616085913675392015-08-28T13:16:00.002+10:002015-08-28T13:16:36.163+10:00Hidden Tiger<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I made a pretty cool Hearthstone deck with some of the new expansion cards that I've been sitting at about Rank 8 with for the last couple of days. <a href="http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/312475-hidden-tiger-rank-7">I call it Hidden Tiger </a>and I'm way too pleased with that word play. Yes, the deck does in fact include lions, and tigers, and a few bears. This also pleases me way too much.<br />
<br />
I'm super excited about it because I never thought I'd be able to make a "competitive" and also super fun deck with just my own brain meats. The idea of the math behind mana curves makes me depressed so I always looked up decks online and used the ones I thought were fun.<br />
<br />
My deck uses the current meta efficiency combo plate of two Eaglehorn Bow, six Secrets and two Mad Scientists, with a focus on efficient midgame minions and low-cost removal to supplement the traps and weapon. But anyway I <a href="http://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/312475-hidden-tiger-rank-7">already wrote about it</a>. Comments are super appreciated.</div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-15450951233657547212015-08-23T08:21:00.002+10:002015-08-23T08:58:08.168+10:00Again!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Some thoughts on the expansion info that has been revealed so far.<br />
<br />
The Legion is back! Again! The Burning Crusade was merely a setback. Now begins the Legion Crusade! Though if this one turns out to be a setback too, they'll probably be back in about expansion number ten with a fully armed and fully operational Burning Legion Crusade. If we kill Archimonde any more the lore team might finally give up and just say respawning is canon.<br />
<br />
Artifact weapons sound like a great alternate progression system, and anything that might simplify loot tables a bit is probably good-- we don't need <i>more</i> gear slots to fill. Class quests sound dumb but whatever, so are most quests.<br />
<br />
The third new class to be added to the game is the Demon Hunter from Diablo. Though for some reason in WoW it's a melee class, not ranged. I assume they just liked the name "Demon Hunter" because it's expansion appropriate and threw out everything but the name like any good corporation trying to exploit a franchise.<br />
<br />
Do the devs know something I don't, which is why they have never created a new ranged class? I just don't get why it keeps happening. I'm not saying it's <i>definitely </i>not a coincidence, but three is a much clearer pattern than two. If it continues like that, next we'll get either a melee Witch Doctor or melee Wizard.<br />
<br />
The other disappointing thing is that like Death Knights you can't level Demon Hunters from the start of the game. Levels one through ninety-four are missing from this class. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a minority of players because I don't actively resent every unnecessary second that Blizzard forces me to play their video game.<br />
<br />
Also, and I might be splitting hairs here, but <i>two </i>hero classes? It's like the word hero has no meaning any more.</div>
</div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-22822446751867370392015-07-25T00:29:00.000+10:002015-07-25T00:29:00.188+10:00Hypocrisy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The very same day I was complaining in this blog about my raid giving gear to healers and tanks first I found myself in a position to benefit from that very policy and completely forgot to protest. Our warrior tank has all his tier bonuses so I'm only competing with one other healer for token drops now. I feel a bit guilty, like any situation where I notice that I'm benefiting from an unfair system. Should I have refused the token on principle?<br /><br />It's weird to realise that if I had been any higher on the list I wouldn't have ended up with only Heroic tokens-- previous token drops were almost all from the normal modes that we've been farming for this purpose. The people who got tokens before me are going to have to wait for the DPS to complete their bonuses before they can justify taking the ilevel upgrade. This tier sure is about the bonuses.<br /><br />Speaking of which, the legendary ring has been depressing me. I feel like we are moving towards this ring being absolutely compulsory for all raiders, and I have lost faith in Blizzard to have any awareness of this kind of power creep.<br /><br />It would be nice if I could just raid normally and get it, but several months ago I made the mistake of not playing the game for a bit. When I came back to raiding I still needed Highmaul drops for the quest, but my raid was only doing Blackrock Foundry. Today I still need Blackrock Foundry drops when my raid is only doing Hellfire Citadel-- basically I never caught up and actually probably fell further behind because I'm out of sync with the reward structure. Doesn't really seem fair, but I don't care so much that I'm willing to resort to grinding for the sake of "efficiency". </div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9006188268467255424.post-38532102258018393442015-07-24T01:45:00.000+10:002015-07-24T01:45:00.040+10:00Avoidable mechanics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Spirit spirit everywhere but not a GCD to drink.<br />
<br />
Y'know
because mana tea is based on spirit now but GCDs are too valuable to spend drinking it. So it's an accurate analogy. <br />
<br />
For most of the previous raid tier I felt distinctly regen starved,
but having the opposite problem is way more frustrating. Being low on
regen at least forces you to play better to compensate. Too much mana
will always dumb down healer gameplay, and I have to say I feel pretty
dumb running a spam healing rotation on the entire raid at all times
because I literally don't have anything else to do with the mana and if I
don't overheal I'll end up at the bottom of the numbers.<br />
<br />
My
raid has been overhealing every single fight. Even progression fights.
It's completely ridiculous. I switched to DPS at the beginning of last
night's raid (even though I hate melee) because the excess of healing is
so obvious that I feel like a dickhead contributing to it. They asked
me to switch back to healing on the second boss after a few wipes that of course
had zero to do with healing throughput, and we overhealed the rest of
the raid.<br />
<br />
Is there a way I can point this out without
seeming like I'm acting subversively towards the guild? WoW players are a
passionate bunch and experience has taught me that their sense of
loyalty is very easily offended.<br />
<br />
How do players usually
figure out an ideal healer/dps ratio? Most people seem to want more
healing than they need-- is it a common cognitive bias to think this?
Does Blizzard quote any specific ideal ratio? Does the skill level of
the group affect healing demand? Should it? I'd hazard a guess that the
top ten raiding guilds use fewer healers than most groups.<br />
<br />
What
I know is that when I heal a challenging 5-man dungeon, I feel like I'm
using all the tools of my class as intended, making efficient choices
and reacting to dangerous situations. When I heal as part of a team I
try to see "around" what all the other healers are doing to fill the
gaps, and most of the time it's just really obvious that the gap
remaining is far smaller than the throughput that I'm capable of. I feel
like I'm spending all my time competing with other healers to fill the
limited opportunities for healing in the fight as quickly as possible,
since nobody is ever in the danger zone for longer than it takes for
five instant heals to land on them.<br />
<br />
No amount of healing gear will prevent people from dying stupidly to avoidable mechanics.</div>
Coreushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10258450322199352185noreply@blogger.com1