Often times, people learn that the stove is hot by touching it.

It’s easier to blame the stove than the person who touched it. But if you laugh when you watch it happen, you’re probably not laughing at the stove.

Oh hey, that’s awesome! I’m glad someone found something I said helpful 😃

I don’t ever want to oversell a self-help book because their usefulness really depends on the person reading it, but honestly this one has been life changing for me too.

I don’t really run a lot of cyberpunk, but I’m all about subverting player expectations. The trick is usually to make them feel like they got something out of the skill, while also ensuring that they don’t circumvent the whole thing with a single check.

So say you look up the evil bad guy’s social media to find out where they live. Then you discover that they live in a hardened bunker only accessible from the private elevator of their corporate penthouse office. The knowledge of their whereabouts is useful, but it’s still going to require more strategizing to figure out how to penetrate it.

Or if they’re a major public figure, you might discover that their social media is being run by a botnet. You might not get your target’s exact location, but it gives you a chance to direct the players in an investigation at the botnet’s physical address.

Hacking the CCTV camera might determine that Joe did it. But maybe the assailant was disguised, or Joe got deepfaked, or your hacker discovers that someone has deleted / corrupted the footage. All of these scenarios have potential to turn the investigation in another direction.

If you have a hack-happy player then you probably want to do something to beef up the villains’ technological prowess. Ultimately you do want to reward the player for using their skillset, but you also want to challenge them too. Every hero needs a foil, after all.

It would probably be disingenuous to have every villain suddenly be a computer prodigy though. But it’s not unreasonable to have a few high-profile hacking antagonists or organizations. And if you’re the sort of villain who has the resources to wield a private army or a lavish ultra-rich lifestyle, it stands to reason that you’ve probably contracted out your IT needs

Yeah, that’s a good 'un!

Man, can’t spell “trans man” without “man” so if you’re trans then you da man!

If you say it ten times fast then it’s an affirmation and a tongue twister

Say pardner… do you have any of that good sarsaparilla?

Sure, but underestimating the scope is how you wind up with a Scunthorpe problem

Pepe has been sensationalized for a while now in the media as being a hate symbol. I think it’s because you see it largely on 4chan which traditional media demonizes.

I’m not on 4chan, but it seems like it has similar problems to Steam: a large userbase and poor content moderation gives insufferable people a platform to spread hate from. These problems aren’t unique to either platform, but the news likes to latch on to them.

I hate that some people consider Pepe to be a hate symbol. He’s just an expressive frog, dang it

I don’t disagree, but it is a challenging problem. If you’re filtering for “die” then you’re going to find diet, indie, diesel, remedied, and just a whole mess of other words.

I’m in the camp where I believe they really should be reading all their inputs. You’ll never know what you’re feeding the machine otherwise.

However I have no illusions that they’re not cutting corners to save money

I’d always taken the Bathory legend at face value, but a while back I heard this song and it made me wonder

I’m no historian, so obviously I’m not an authority in the matter. But the more life experience I get the more I’m realizing that even recorded history has institutional bias

Love the meme though, get it girl!

I would rather be misinformed than disinformed. Either way you have a chance to learn and grow, but at least with misinformation you can come by it honestly. Disinformation is far more grave of an issue

They say ignorance is bliss, so I’d probably be happier to know a little. Unfortunately, I already know more than a little and it’s not easy to unlearn, so I guess I’m cursed with awareness now

However, if you only know a little then you’re more susceptible to (dis/mis)information. That can have a tremendously negative impact on your quality of life - although I suppose you might not be aware of it

The world would be a better place if we all knew more about it. The only reason why knowledge is cursed is because with knowledge we see how unfairly a few humans treat each other

If I don’t tell everyone how hard I’m working and what a success I am, then how will people know that I’ve got that grindset?

We should normalize the cat’s 18-hour rest day, I’m sure we’d all be happier

With the sheer volume of training data required, I have a hard time believing that the data sanitation is high quality.

If I had to guess, it’s largely filtered through scripts, and not thoroughly vetted by humans. So data sanitation might look for the removal of slurs and profanity, but wouldn’t have a way to find misinformation or a request that the reader stops existing.

The Wikipedia article on Typhon contains 22 references to the word “fire” and following them suggests that Typhon has fire breath, vision, and will one day re-emerge to destroy the world in fire

As a general rule you should be skeptical of AI. But in this case it seems to check out

Many years ago at a wedding reception someone brought a plate of magic brownies. They were clearly marked, everyone knew what they were.

An elderly relative who had never smoked in her life got into them. Before she started she was warned what they were. Nobody wanted to be the person who fed straight-laced grandma the weed, right?

She said, “It’s okay, I don’t do drugs so they won’t affect me.”

I don’t know what she thought doing drugs looked like, but boy howdy did she learn

Well, I guess it it can be disproportionate at times

But if you’re a teenager with no money then the system doesn’t care as long as it can extract value from you

Sounds like you need to sweep out the chimney. It’s a dirty job, it sucks, and it’ll only get worse if you put it off. But in time you’ll be burning like new again.

I don’t know exactly how the metaphor applies in your situation, but I’ve struggled for a long time with burnout and that resonates with me. Hopefully you find some comfort

Oh my gosh, I was not prepared for that.
As if CSS didn’t give me enough reasons to cry.

But it’s still got to be responsive for all devices, although flexbox is disabled

Sometimes a slime’s just got to take a break from the dungeon to feel the sun on their face and the wind in their… flagellum?