TotallyHuman

joined 2 years ago
[–] TotallyHuman@lemmy.ca 21 points 3 months ago

On a movie set, the director has a huge amount of authority. It's been baked into the culture for about a hundred years that the director is one step below God. A studio treats films as investments, but they also hire a director and (mostly) get out of the way. Sure, producers do meddle, but it's nowhere close to the same amount as with games -- and all the meddling is still pointed at the director, not the crew. I think this limits the damage that can be done.

Also, the film industry has strong unions. Most of the abuses in game dev simply aren't allowed. I suspect that the horrible culture of game dev can cause developers to stop caring, which bleeds through to the final product, and that won't happen to the same extent for movies.

[–] TotallyHuman@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 months ago

Granted. "Arbitrarily large" would probably be a better phrasing: if I buy a stock for $100 and the value drops to $0, I'm out $100. Can't lose more money than I put in. What I meant is that short positions, by their nature, don't have this ceiling on the amount of money you lose.

[–] TotallyHuman@lemmy.ca 14 points 4 months ago (3 children)

If EA, having been purchased, is milked for cash, strip-mined for IP, and then unceremoniously abandoned, it will be very funny.

[–] TotallyHuman@lemmy.ca 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

You can hold a short position by repeatedly borrowing more stock -- but you run the risk of running out of money completely, because short positions have (theoretically) infinite downside risk.

[–] TotallyHuman@lemmy.ca 13 points 4 months ago

If you imagine it like making a bet, nobody's going to take a bet with you where they pay you when it pops, but there's no time after which you pay them -- because they'd never get any money out of that bet. Buying stock is different because it's a thing you can own, but you can't invest in the idea of something failing, because there isn't any business which will take your money and make something more likely to fail.

You could buy every stock except AI-related stocks, which I believe is functionally equivalent to buying an index fund and shorting AI stocks based on the percentage of AI stocks in the index fund. You could also think about what businesses would do well (or less poorly) in the case of an AI-instigated crash, and then buy those.

[–] TotallyHuman@lemmy.ca 7 points 6 months ago

I just want to take a moment to enjoy that the Canada Post thing is one of our country's big political conversations. There's a problem, and people have different solutions. Some of the solutions rely on false information or bad reasoning. Some of them are well-reasoned, but have different priorities to each other. The government will have to make a decision, and some will praise it, and some will criticize it, and it will make some peoples' lives better, and some peoples' lives worse.

But nobody's using the Canada Post situation as a vehicle to hurt people they hate. People don't seem to be moving in lockstep based on ideology and propaganda. Nobody's been called a fascist over it because nobody's been being a fascist over it. This is what politics should be like. It's refreshing.

[–] TotallyHuman@lemmy.ca 5 points 11 months ago

Headlines often change after publication. Everyone's A/B testing these days.

[–] TotallyHuman@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You might disagree with the argument, but it's not completely random. From the US, we gained most of the benefits of having nukes and spooks, without having to maintain them ourselves. Since we can't trust them, we now have to decide if it's worth developing our own.

[–] TotallyHuman@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago

Because when everyone knows that your only play is to support the reds, then the reds themselves know that they can abuse that desperation, renege on deals with you, etc. After all, what other plays do you have?

Dropping the deal is short-term disadvantageous, but by establishing a reputation for punishing allies who don't uphold their end of a bargain, they can be more influential in the future.

[–] TotallyHuman@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

May not be a very useful one, but it hardly seems bizarre. Of course I wish that fascists were less fascist! Then there would be less fascism, and I don't like fascism and want there to be less of it! Wishing doesn't do anything on its own, but it's not a strange wish to have.

[–] TotallyHuman@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

Maybe more of a mystery story? Just take the "investigative reporter" angle and run with it.

[–] TotallyHuman@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I don't like that the conservative party is using provincial funds to advertise for their political views -- especially with advertisements which aren't rigorously truthful. It feels slimy, but does anyone know if this is legal?

 

Let's make a list of magic items that are flavourful and interesting! I'll start us off.

  1. A fine tablecloth which, when placed on a table, conjures food, plates, and cutlery. The food is different every time, but always delicious and high-quality, conferring a minor rest/morale bonus. The table is always impeccably set. The food and everything else disappears if anyone at the table commits a breach of etiquette, no matter how minor. The tablecloth then has a cooldown period before it can be used again. (Depending on how clever your players are and how much you like watching them suffer, the tablecloth might have the relevant rule embroidered on it until the next time it's used.)
  2. A pair of bracelets which, when worn, make all non-magical animals friendly. They don't allow for communication or taming -- "friendly" does not mean "subordinate", and the animals are still animal-level intelligent. The bracelets also make nearby animals friendly to each other: if you're petting a rabbit, a wolf will just nuzzle up next to it.
  3. A laser gun that does no damage, but which causes its target to believe that whichever limb it hit was destroyed or severed.
  4. A tamper-evident magical lock: fairly easy to pick, but the person attuned to it (or anyone who knows the activation phrase) can tell when it was last opened by touching it.
  5. A clockwork bird that will fly in a path the user sets when activating it, but has no collision avoidance capability.
  6. A fortune-telling implement (marked bones, crystal ball, etc) which doesn't provide any sort of divination ability, but makes other people believe the predictions the user makes with it.
  7. An enchanted flare-gun that will draw a line in the sky between the user and the closest sapient creature that isn't within five meters.
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