Thanks for posting Alaina. How's your family doing?
In Mikkel's news: I didn't realize how much I miss trees before Oregon. Trees are amazing. (Amazing!)
Here’s a classic riddle you’ve maybe heard: "A father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he’s about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, 'I can’t operate—that boy is my son!' "
Here is the answer. (I remember being deeply confused by this when I heard it at about 18 or so.)
Our confusion comes from gender bias, and it is learned, not innate. We learn it from the feedback we get from our parents and other and authority figures. We learn it from our peers. We learn it from TV, movies, and pop culture.
Same story for learning about masculinity or what it means to ‘be a man’ and how to interact with others as a man. Some of us (older folks *cough*) grew up learning from James Bond and Harrison Ford movies that women’s anger is funny/ignorable, and ‘no’ can mean ‘yes’, among other hugely problematic things. (I’m not particular fan of Frozen (Moana was way better), but plus +1000 points for a depiction of affirmative consent.)
What is learned can be unlearned (very difficult, but possible), and an even better strategy is to start teaching kids at a young age about equality. (Note I don't know what the author means by a ‘pink economy’ although I'm pretty sure it's not what comes up from a google search, and unfortunately I have yet to see empathy valued in physics.) We can raise tiny humans to be good people and equal partners - all genders should have role models of all genders (and same for other identities). A good start: Newt Scamander is the actual best.
Also, #RoleModelGoals.
I have a deep love of the way Oregon's natural beauty exists. I'd like to live there, after all my schooling is said and done.
I'm not going to lie, it took me a good 20 seconds to understand the riddle. Though I am craving some karaoke now.
For real though, it's like everything I love about the east coast plus mountains, cliffs, evergreens, and presumably minus some ice and snow. (Granted, I haven't seen that much of it yet.)
You did waaay better than 18-year-old Mikkel. (I would probably still have a hard time with it now, unprompted and without context, but investing energy in calibrating for my bias is helping.)
I'd definitely say Oregon is a great place to live, if not a littttle expensive from time to time xD
And it really is a great time of year to visit, obviously. If you're into that sunny thing.
I knew the answer to the riddle, but it definitely was only because I'd heard it before. I probably would've had trouble with it, too.
Apologies for my absence! When I couldn't log on to the website for a couple of days I got out of the habbit of posting, and I'm only now remembering that.
@Henri: The struggle is real - pretty much every time I deem a feminine person to have acted incompetently I try to ask myself if that's colored by bias, and usually the answer is yes. Even worse is trying to think of candidates for leadership - men tend to come to mind at a disproportionately high rate because I associate masculinity with 'leader', and I don't even realize in the moment because it feels like my free-association brainstorming is fair. When I calibrate by making sure I consider women explicitly I usually get 'oh yeah, she is quite good' candidates that I really should have thought of first.
@Cel: No worries, the forums were acting up for me too.
Sorry about the absence, was a really rough weekend for me atop the forums acting up when I finally uncurled and checked. My apologies.
No worries at all Xizoh, I know them feels. Thanks for posting. Hope whatever it is that made your weekend rough abates soon.
Semi-relatedly, y'all should go see Wonder Woman. It is super good, and highly likely to distract from one's problems.
June is LGBTQ+ pride month!
I've been heartened to hear about folks in science and tech investing energy in recruiting those who identify as LGBTQ+. Last year the American Physical Society produced a nice report on climate for LGBTQ+ physicists. They've started implementing some of the recommended practices this year, including facilitating name changes in scientific papers, which I thought was cool (in a 'why are we just doing this now, but hey, great' way).
The experiment I work on is organizing recruitment tables at some of the pride rallies around the country and I hear other science fields are starting to do that too. Awesome.
Harder and more important work is changing the culture itself to be more inclusive. Our collaboration has tried to tackle this with a program of vetted allies people can turn to for help navigating/mitigating hostile interactions/situations. Hopefully LGBTQ+ inclusive training for mentors will also become standard within a few years - many mentors (the vast majority being cis-gendered and straight) don't realize they're excluding people with attitudes and remarks that seem 'normal' to them. (Myself included.)
Hopefully the message is felt loud and clear: You belong.
(And if it isn't yet, we'll have to do better until it is.)
Seconded on def. seeing Wonder Woman, it's a great and entertaining movie (as SOME great movies are not exactly entertaining, it's definitely worth clarifying lol)
Hooray Henri cursing in Draconic! Always makes my day.
Heads up all I'm starting the journey back to SoCal in a bit. I plan to post at the airport ~ 7 hours from now, but there's a nonzero chance you won't hear from me again 'til tomorrow. I should have plenty of time to post this weekend.
===== Introducing Arc II =====
There’s a new gameplay thread up!
Everyone should read the prologue (Warning: Dara's has a bit of a spoiler I should have marked.) Alaina, Dara, and Henri should look for posts.
Xizoh should please finish up the last scene of the interlude in the Arc I thread (probably within a few more posts). If Cel’s player is ready to jump back in I advise Cel come downstairs and ask about the information he got at the end of the interlude, and/or tag along with Alaina to the military building (both/either in the new thread please).
It may take just a bit more meta-coordinating to get the gang back on the same timeline to decide on their future plans, and assuming the PCs take the bait (er, hook) we should be ready to rock and roll.
===== Arc II Administrative stuff ======
- We’ll keep the same autobot rules (48 hours normally, 24 for combat)
- We’ll make our adopted expected post rate 1/day (instead of the old 10/week) official. (Mostly for my sake - travel season kind of never ended.)
- I think I was successful linking our old discussion thread to the new campaign. Basic campaign info should be up soon, and I’ll link a new map once it becomes relevant. I'll mark Arc I inactive once everyone's finished up, and hopefully that will feel very satisfying to all.
- I gave making NPC aliases some serious consideration and came to the conclusion it’d increase the GM post rate by about a factor of 5 or so on average. Not much additional work for me, but I currently favor keeping things fairly condensed to intertwine NPC speech and actions in with PC observations. That being said, I could be convinced otherwise if players would find it helpful to keep track of who's who and what's happening. Further thoughts on this are welcome.
Guess I need to go wake up Dulae. =D
I just got around to putting up the world map and NPC roster - the Arc II thread should be good to go, and we'll add the campaign map when it's time.
Next order of business: I figure we should see about making sure the party is leveled to 5th. Looks like Alaina, Cel, and Dara are leveled, and Henri and Xizoh need to level. Accurate?
I had a quick glance over Alaina, Cel, and Dara's crunch - looks good (thanks for laying it out so clearly too).
Henri and Xizoh - holler if you want any feedback from me, anytime.
(Xizoh, I am willing to offer a bribe to entice you to switch from charactersheet.co.uk to a more anonymous google doc version, if you will advise what form of bribery would be most effective.)
I'd be more than happy to, just give me some time to roll everything over. Once I've done that, I would appreciate a double check. I actually leveled up the character sheet some time ago, and have just been waiting to update it. Also, made my stats a bit more GM friendly.
Much appreciated Xizoh, and I will do. (Xizoh has his first post up in Arc II btw.)
Arc I is marked as complete! Thanks again all for playing. (Also, wow, what a note to end on, Xizoh.)
I grew up in (upstate) NY being warned about ‘dangerous neighborhoods’. It certainly seemed like these were dangerous places - police were called and people were arrested far more often. It wasn’t until I moved away and found new perspectives that I realized ‘dangerous’ was subconscious code for ‘not white’ and that while there were certainly more arrests and policing in these neighborhoods, it wasn’t necessarily because there was more crime. I’m not sure if I hadn’t moved away that I ever would have realized.
Relatedly, this is a beautiful piece that gives the perspective of a black man navigating the US without having grown up with the same institutional racism that we have.
==== GM travel advisory ====
Hey all, I'm headed to the east coast tonight. Today I'm most likely to post from the airport ~6 hours from now, and it looks like Friday and Monday might be tricky for posting, but otherwise I don't expect any delays. I'll be back in L.A. by Monday night. (Just in time for kiddie pool of science day.)
"Once, long ago when the world was new, Altien looked down upon the world. There she saw SEXUAL INEXPERIENCE and declared this to be ABOMINATION. To the world she sent her avatar wielding a mighty sword. If you get my drift.
This avatar of Altien's GRAND WILL went to the then small town of Teresct and pledged to cure the people of their affliction. She held numerous informative public demonstrations of MUTUALLY SATISFACTORY INTERCOURSE.
But lo! There was another great power determined to RUIN EVERYONE'S FUN. Norah, blight of the world, sent evil agents to spread evil, FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE which REDUCED THE FREQUENCY OF ORGASMS.
The people of Altiendel immediately recognized the inherent wrongness of this and pledged themselves to the cause of GOOD and JUST stimulation, exposing Norah's agents for all to see. And other things, occasionally.
Thus, the people became ALTIEN'S CHOSEN. Norah's teachings are only remembered by our most foul of curses.... Norah's Taint!"
...
...
Dulae scowled at Kieran. "You're making this up."
Kieran winked.
Lol, Kieran's monologue is like the 7th grade in the format of a crank on the internet trying to convince me one of our results is wrong. (I was amused.)
Recent exchange:
Them: You do THIS THING in your analysis and it is WRONG and EVERYTHING IS WRONG
Me: We don't do that thing, we do this other correct thing
Them: You do THIS THING in your analysis and it is WRONG and EVERYTHING IS WRONG
Another noteworthy capitalization anecdote: I recently received a message entitled 'A MESSAGE FROM HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF SPAIN' that was actually not spam. Go figure.
Super important announcement: whilst in Massachusetts I observed a firefly. It was amazing. (Unless they're around in Denmark, that could well be it for Operation Firefly Watch 2017.)
Also, today was kiddie pool of science day! Always fun to spend some time with wide-eyed future scientists. (Young kids are probably the only people I don't mind commenting on my appearance - they're trying to figure out their place in the world and they get so excited to see a scientist who looks like them.)
I came across this story about a self-proclaimed progressive professor. Good read, and a good example of a broader trend. I've seen plenty of other examples where (usually white) progressive-minded folks feel personally attacked when critiqued about race.
An example: I witnessed a baby boomer I admire and respect get called out for referring to a group of young black men (about Xizoh's age) who tend to wear hoodies as 'hoodlums'. It was pointed out that these youngsters never make any trouble, and this kind of language leads to a defensive pre-emptive strike mentality where black people are seen as dangerous/criminal and are more likely to be arrested or shot. The baby boomer resisted the criticism, insisting that they'd 'marched in the civil rights movement and they knew a thing or two about real race struggles'. (The critic then issued an invitation for the baby boomer to join us in 2017 and not contribute to our current problems and the argument became more of a fight.)
Worth noting: I'm 100% sure I still say things that are harmful without thinking them through from others' perspective - hopefully I have as good of a friend around who will help me check myself.
Tangentially related to both the assumed authority of white people and younger people trying to find where they can belong, someone mentioned to me recently they like to choose RPG character names that are easy to pronounce. I wholeheartedly believe they genuinely meant 'easy for everyone everywhere to pronounce' but probably what it means in practice is 'easy for native-English-speaking Americans to pronounce'.
We see this more strongly in physics. Although we now tend to include female names to help normalize girls doing/liking physics, all the classic physics texts are completely white-washed. Alice and Bob do physics. Susan, Jane, Mary, Peter, Joe, and Henry do physics. But never Aaliyah, Busarakham, Guadalupe, Amir, Hamid, or Malek. This sends a clear message about who physics is for and who physicists are, probably closely coupled to the fact that many different sets of authors genuinely only thought of 'common' American names as wholly representative. (And the number of minorities with physics PhDs reflects that.)
With RPGs and physics, for my characters and examples I like to choose popular names from different countries around the world that are easy for many thousands/millions of people to pronounce, not necessarily including me. (Mine is just one approach among many, including inventing new names.)
To end on a note of humor: one of my favorite ever Key and Peele sketches inverts the common American/Canadian practice of anglicizing, or erasing the 'otherness' of names that aren't considered easy to pronounce. (Definitely worth a quick watch; it still makes me laugh.)
So, just an update on my life.
Tomorrow, I'm heading home for my grandmother's funeral service. Today, I found out my grandfather passed early this morning.
Bit of a twisted upside, I can use bereavement leave as opposed to PTO.
In short, over the next few days, bot me as needed.
So sorry to hear that Alaina. Of course, I can do that.
Best wishes to you and your family.
Yeah, that's really tragic! All the best to you and yours
Agreed, incredibly sorry to hear that. Sending good vibes to you and yours.
Happy 4th all! Anyone doing anything fun?
This July 4th is the first in my living memory that my extended family back east won't be getting together, and I suspect post-election politics has something to do with it. For example, my uncle recently shared a facebook post celebrating the Texas ban of 'sharia law' (which tbf is not exactly what Texas HB45 did from what I understand) and advocating for practicing Muslims to be registered with the state. I feel horrified on a few different levels and it's hard to know where to even begin to talk to him about it.
Relatedly, when I first read this piece about how hard it seems to bridge the liberal-conservative divide I was like ohhh man I feel that. That's exactly the step I seem to get stuck on. But now when I see the right described as 'hordes of cruel and selfish people', I think I can see the disconnect. We all think of historically 'evil' people whose decisions had cruel effects, like the Nazi party, as cartoonish villains. But they were very human - some of them were undoubtedly grandmothers baking cookies while brushing off their neighbors' disappearance. Or potentially my own uncle, apparently. It's possible to do or stand for something horribly cruel without recognizing it for what it is. It really doesn't make it any better, or absolve anyone of responsibility for their actions, but recognizing their choices are in the realm of humanity may be a good first step to getting through.
Speaking of getting through, this article makes some good points about the kinds of messages those on the left tend to consume, although I find some of the rhetoric unnecessarily mean-spirited (for example, the description of Roger Ailes as a 'recently deceased elephantine orb of Elmer’s Glue'). I do love watching Full Frontal and The Daily Show, and I actively go out of my way to watch John Oliver (I learned a lot of things I did not know from Sunday's). Part of the reason is definitely that it feels really good to have my beliefs validated, and that just reinforces this dichotomy presented by left-leaning media of 'clearly right vs. stupid and/or evil'. (Something I'm working on getting away from.)
I do think advocating for social justice and universal health care (among other things) is clearly morally right, but as Cel has pointed out, pretty much all humans are dicks to each other at some point. I'm very sure there are many 'bleeding heart' liberals who do cruel things (I'd like to think not including me, but I have), and conservatives who do selflessly good things. Failing to recognize this may be where the sense of 'hypocrisy of moral superiority' comes from.
I'm hoping that the left adopts a 'build us all up' strategy rather than 'tear the right down'. Civil rights and identity politics are super important and we should absolutely never stop fighting for them. But it seems like we could also use some strong leadership in terms of where we're *all* going together as a country. Let's talk about repairing some dang bridges and roads for f*ck's sake. Everybody likes safe bridges. Paying for college. Job training and retention programs. Veterans' benefits. There's plenty of common ground to be had, and when everyone is better supported people like my uncle (also a cheery grandfather to my second cousins) will hopefully be much less inclined to round up their Muslim neighbors.
I really hope.
In the spirit of independence I am going to post up this thing I made a while ago - I had a much clearer image in my head when I was planning on it and it dodnt come out exactly the way I had hoped, BUT I thought it would be fun to share :P
Holy f*cking actual sh!t this is the BEST! Seriously. Next time I see you I intend to hug you (or better yet, pay you for a copy). Thanks for sharing Henri!!
Okay, so an update on what is going on. My wife and I came back Sunday from my Grandmother's Service, and our dog wasn't eating. Still not eating Monday, she took him into the Vet for an Ultrasound. They found masses in his liver and spleen, they did aspirations and sent them for testing.
Yesterday, I worked and came home, we started watching Independence Day, suddenly our dog begins bleeding out his nose for no reason. So back to the Vet. No cause found.
Today, we boarded him at the vet, just in case something else happened he wouldn't be home alone. Got a text from one of my best friends saying his Mother passed on Monday. She was basically a second mother to me.
So yeah, the bad news train just keeps on rolling. These past couple months have not been friendly.
Mikkel, go ahead and bot, I am in no such state of mind to even try an RP.
Oh my gosh, I am so sorry Alaina. That's terrible news.
Of course, I can definitely do that. Take your time. Please keep us posted if you feel up to it; I'm sure we're all eager to hear how you're doing.
That's terrible Alaina! I'm very sorry to hear all of that.
Unrelated note, I completely forgot to forewarn, I have to go to Hawaii for work for a week and I'll most likely be off the grid. Very sorry for late notice! Bot as needed.
No worries, Cel. Hope you have a wonderful and safe trip! Tell us about it (I've never been).
Speaking of late travel notice,
==== GM travel advisory ====
I'm leaving for Europe tomorrow; I'll be in Copenhagen (in the country of my namesake) through August 18, then somewhere TBD in Europe, then Geneva Aug 28-Sept 2.
tl;dr: No GM posts for ~24 hours tomorrow afternoon into Saturday and on Sept 2nd. Otherwise (provided I have internet in my apartment, which I think I will) GM post rate should resume at the same rate for the summer, but shifted: my usual nightly post time will be early afternoon for y'all.
Okay, so update on things going on.
Talked with our primary care vet, and the aspiration results were inconclusive, they don't know what it is. The only way to know for sure is a biopsy in conjunction with a splenectomy. The problem with that is given the unknown bleeding problem we had Tuesday there's no telling how well he'd bounce back from the surgery, not to mention it would shorten his lifespan. Speaking of which, the vet says that he has about two weeks left, maybe a month if we're lucky. So basically, he's on hospice so we just do what we can to make him comfortable.
The past couple months haven't been kind, but this last week has been the worst. The Reaper Hike wasn't this brutal.
Gods, that's awful Alaina. I don't even know what to say that's reassuring. Wishing you all well.
I may be catching all the good luck you've been missing - my dad just got out of a long, complicated surgery. He has fewer organs than he did before, but he's doing fine and may well live decades longer now. Modern medicine is really amazing for some cases.
Random question out of left field. Who here likes 80's-like Electronic music?
Yeesh. That sounds like the worst, Alaina. I can only hope it gets better for you.
(And on that question, I'd say I'm definitely into it, personally, I like that whole quadrant of electronica a great deal.)
Ahhh I've listened to some of Scandroid's stuff! I think that's Celldweller's side gig, rad as heck. I dig it!
Yeah, music is a bit of a coping mechanism for me. So I've been listening to a lot.
Cool. I'll have a listen once I get the interwebs sorted here.
Have you listened to Carpenter Brut's stuff? Similar genre area, he's fairly big in it so you might have run into it but if not, definitely worth a look imo. Looking for Tracy Tzu has been my go-to "fight the sadness away" song in recent months.
So, we took Bear to the beach today. He absolutely loved it, playing fetch in the water. I took so many pictures and a couple videos. On the drive back, it just hit me, that's the last time we'll probably do that. It isn't fair, he's just so young.
Hey wow, apparently Carpenter Brut makes super amazing music for coding. (Requirements: driving/energetic, no words, good.) Thanks for sharing, Henri.
I'm glad you got to make those memories, Alaina. Every time you see him will be another time you get to share.
On the 80s theme, this song pretty much never fails to cheer me up, at least a little bit. (Probably due at least in part to nostalgia.) Other potential anti-sadness sources: Florence+The Machine and OK Go.
Also, for fun, here's a Swedish band that engineered a marble machine (which is really pretty incredible) to play a song.
Dang, Teen Vogue has been killing it lately. The ‘friend zone’ is particularly insidious, and I think this is be most clearly articulated take I’ve seen yet.
Tropes like this are pretty common, and send a subtle but *terrible* message that masculine relationships with femmes are some kind of barter system. Put effort (time, energy, perhaps money) in, expect to get something (usually sex) out, and if your expectations aren’t met then you’ve been cheated somehow. Or worse yet, that women have some kind of perceived control over men by exercising say over what they do with their own bodies. This faux-playful resentment of women’s agency is mind-bogglingly dehumanizing for how prevalent it is.
Equality means any two (or however many) people have an equal partnership in how they spend time together. Not into doing somebody’s nails? Cool. Don’t do that. The world is your oyster; if y’all appreciate each other’s company, it's likely you can find some mutually enjoyable way to share time. An honest conversation could very well steer all parties toward getting more from the relationship.
Similarly, paying for someone else’s movie ticket, helping solve a problem, or offering emotional support are all damn nice things to do, and do not give the payer/helper/supporter any right to expect anything of the recipient. Ever.
It’s worth noting here that it’s also not great/healthy when the support in a relationship is one-sided or heavily skewed - that’s a different issue partially addressed by recognizing the inherent value in caring for other people. And indeed, mutually supportive relationships of all types are pretty much foundational to a well-functioning society.
tl;dr: taking care of the people around you of all genders like a stupendous emotional labor badass can be extremely rewarding. (Y’know, when you have the bandwidth to give more than ye receive, which is not going to be all day every day, especially if you’re dealing with sh!t.)
Well, it's time. Jen and I have taken the day off to give Bear one last happy day before we take him in. He's going down hill, so we figure it's best before he begins to suffer. Going to be an emotional day.
I wish you all a very happy day together. I think this group would be able to deliver more suggested 'fight the sadness' songs if that'd help.
I'll assume you'd like a bot for today at least. Happy to do anything else that'd be a useful support.
Well wishes heading your way Alaina. I can throw songs your way, though my tastes are a bit...eclectic to say the least. Like Mikkel said, we're here if you need us.
Eclectic tastes are very welcome here, I think.
Okay, cool. If it's important to you, then it's important to me. Otherwise I support you wherever you fall on that axis (or other axes). And it's okay if you're not sure or how you identify changes as a function of time.
(It may be helpful to note that although I don't identify as ace, I also fall on the 'less is more' side of the sexuality spectrum relative to median humans, and that evolution of realization came when I was at least five years older than you are now.)
I'm very sorry to hear that you're losing a family member. There's not enough condolences :(
Agreed - how're you and Jen doing, Alaina?
What’s that Disraeli quote Mark Twain was fond of? "Lies, damned lies, and statistics”?
Sh!t like this makes me really worried. This is a piece in a major national magazine that argues essentially that black people who have been shot by police are likely violent criminals who had it coming. It’s horrifying.
The article reports that in many of these cases the police were being attacked or some violent offense was in progress (very likely as reported by police), and cops were usually responding to a call, not initiating the encounter.
If the underlying issue really is that people are predisposed to see black people as violent and threatening, then naturally we’d expect black people would get the cops called on them disproportionately more, and naturally the police (also being people who carry the same societal bias) would be more likely to characterize a black person’s resistance as an attack and be more prone to suspect them of violence.
Thanks to some recent cases (with some extremely disturbing associated footage), police apparently need only the excuse that they feared for their own lives to avoid prison time for ending a life. And it is exactly this notion that black people are “disproportionately violent offenders” that makes it so that black people don’t even need a weapon in order to justify killing them. Their skin alone is enough to cause fear.
Training police about bias is one good thing to do to help address this. It is not a “demonstrably small number” of police who could benefit from this. We all have bias. Humans are biased. Police are biased. That doesn’t make them bad people, but ideally we need the people with the lethal weapons to be a bit better than the rest of us.
It’s frustrating that the last part of the article gets some right in that “America has failed its black communities”. However, this is largely for the same reason this charming list of curated stats was meant to help convince us that black people are different from people-less-likely-to-experience-death-by-police (ahem, white people): “Black people, who constitute about 13 percent of Americans ... are 1.4 percent of doctors, 38 percent of barbers, and 16 percent of cooks. They account for 14 percent of pedestrian fatalities and 74.4 percent of NBA players but just 8 percent of NPR newsroom employees.”
All true, but black people not are less smart or more violent. A big part of why there are so few black doctors is that we don’t see black people as doctors. Black people tend to not get as much encouragement to go to med school from mentor figures like teachers and counselors, and they tend to get more encouragement to pursue sports. Because that’s what they should do in the eyes of authority figures, who are often biased without realizing it.
I think police training, better representation in media/TV/movies/stories, and calibrating for bias in recruiting black talent for education and employment will all help. And on that much more positive note, here’s a bit of black girl magic from way back in my day.
30 laps around the sun today.
Not sure if it's because of my recent loss or not, but this song hit me right in the feels.