Notices by Matthew Skala (mattskala@mstdn.io), page 8

Year-long necromancer siege just ended. During that time one zombie managed to get into the fort and killed all but five dwarfs before they struck it down. Now Logem, manager, spends most of her time complaining to Ilral, expedition leader, and he spends most of his time listening to her - which because the two of them are 40% of the work force, really puts a dent in productivity. I was hoping for love to bloom, since they are both single, but apparently the age gap is too wide.

@clacke @enkiv2 As I said in the article comments, it's very difficult to reject taking a position a on a political issue at all, without it being perceived as "we should take the opposite position from yours."

Haven't seen josef around here in a while. Has he rotated to somewhere else?

the thing like Rickrolling where you get someone to watch a YouTube video that fucks up future recommendations The Algorithm™ will give them

@eal mushroom ketchup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERWr8la3Y_M

@lain I don't need your war machines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r_qd2yxIsM

@enkiv2 The questions of religion being inherently political, and distinguishing between what's brought in from outside and what may be inherent to a system, are discussed in my article at a considerably deeper level than vague generalizations. If you have read it, then I encourage you to respond in the comment section there.

@enkiv2 I don't think left-right politics should be brought into circle at all.

@Tryphon This same effect seems to be the desired property of single-payer health care systems: with only one buyer, that buyer has power to set prices that would not exist in the current environment of multiple buyers who *must* buy (and so can't say "the price is too high")

Also in the pagan/occult vein, reminder that I run a free astrological chart service at https://edifyingfellowship.org/astro/ . Nicely typeset charts using the relevant LaTeX packages, which I also wrote.

Repost because it's has come up on a couple of discussions here and elsewhere recently: When they bring in the idols. Political tribes trying to co-opt pagan religion for their own ends; a terrible shame if we let them, because it entails destroying what's unique about paganism. https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/355

@enkiv2 This is a subject I wrote about at some length in my own Web log last month: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/355

The David Chapman article I cite in there may also be of interest, though that's more from a Buddhist perspective than my own pagan perspective.

@lain yes, but being a chef is sufficiently shameful that being Italian too won't save you

@enkiv2 All down to how old something has to be to be "traditional" - and I think it was organized along the same lines as much older businesses, when it started

@enkiv2 The same can be said of a number of traditional Japanese cultural things, e.g. sumo - they're *terrible* jobs and lifestyles, not easy to recruit into now that young people maybe have more personal power in choosing career path than was the case in earlier eras

So you're a criminal or terrorist and you want to really fuck up the Net. How do you know whom to kidnap, coerce, or subvert? ESR is making a list of vulnerable and important persons! http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8383

Don't get me wrong, I think he's basically right... but it *is* possible to foresee unintended consequences from this effort.

@enkiv2 > Perhaps the biggest problem in the Japanese animation industry is that there are no more young animators

I wonder how much that's just simply the demographic crisis and not animation-specific: in Japan there are no more young *anything*

@mayuutann Last time it was drinking tea - if you have trouble swallowing and don't know if you can drink tea, you "try to drink tea." But if you want to stay awake and don't know if tea will help, even though you are sure you are able to drink it, you "try drinking tea."

@mayuutann I remember we talked about this once before... I would say it depends what is the unknown part:

"try to reboot" - I don't know if I am able to reboot, like maybe I press Ctrl-Alt-Del and nothing happens

"try rebooting" - I know I can reboot, but I don't know if it will have the result I want, like maybe I do the reboot and my mouse driver still doesn't work

hey can we say that the straw banning thing is racist because it targets bubble tea and therefore East Asians?