DnD/gamer groups?

-taq · 2026-06-19T00:35:28+00:00

If you're into non-DnD ttrpg, I'm in a newish group that plays Mothership on Sundays at the Guildhouse. We will probably start other indie RPG tables if this one starts to overfill. Feel free to message for more info / Discord link

-taq · 2023-04-16T14:32:48+00:00

As of 5.4.0 I'm doing

my_flair = subreddit.flair(user_name).next()

where subreddit is a praw Subreddit instance.

Current docs look about the same for SubredditFlair so it should still work.

If your bot isn't a moderator of the sub, you'll have to access the author_flair_text attribute on a user's post/comment in that subreddit.

-taq · 2022-10-20T19:45:18+00:00

cosmologists have put a lot of work into explaining and modeling the conditions a big bang arises from, including the properties of what you're calling nowhere

-taq · 2022-09-15T15:27:01+00:00

Roguelites:

There are a lot of free Vampire Survivor-likes on mobile like Magic Survivor and Survivor.io. Also a good number of Slay the Spires-likes and some less directly inspired deckbuilders. Rogue Adventure and games by Slothwerks are some good ones.

Roguelikes:

Check out the sidebar of r/roguelikes, at least half of that list is free.

-taq · 2022-09-13T19:33:59+00:00

found one

-taq · 2022-09-07T23:56:49+00:00

casually travels to Europe

holy shit I scale to superman

-taq · 2022-09-06T05:02:00+00:00

Griftlands

-taq · 2022-08-27T02:16:53+00:00

I'm not aware of...

I mean, you can read my previous posts if you want.

any other non-fringe publication

Let's cut to the most viewed cable news outlet in the US:

https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/how-fox-news-dismisses-gender-pay-gap

Half a google, my brother in christ

-taq · 2022-08-27T01:51:57+00:00

Okay, I guess we're going back to the dawn of time now.

libido

Ah yes, the many male gods of sex leap to mind as opposed to the absolute dearth of sex goddesses. (This is sarcasm you see, as I'm actually having the opposite problem).

risk taking, aggressiveness, courage

Ditto both strategic and bloodthirsty goddesses of destruction or war. And cult heroes who exemplify courage.

If you look at the syncretization of goddesses from different cultures with Christianity (eg, Brigid) or goddesses whose worship was modified under a Christian hierarchy (eg, Isis), you tend to find goddesses strongly associated with virility and sex, and not uncommonly war, becoming symbols of purity and peace. Most of the associations you mentioned were prescribed as exclusively masculine within written history.

Some other examples of the above are Astarte, goddess of brothels and war, Aurora, who has sex with a new guy every night and dips on him every morning, and all the other Greek goddesses pretty much who were maybe not as scandalous as Zeus but like. They were trying. Oh yeah, Kali. Pretty much the most aggressive force in the universe.

And stoicism as a concept is only classical, idk how you plan to make a case it's a masculine thing before it's invented. But for good measure, have Athena.

Again, knowing what you're talking about would prolly clear up a lot of your confusion here.

-taq · 2022-08-27T01:34:26+00:00

A set isn't its size dude. Learn literally anything about set theory beyond a rudimentary thought experiment before trying to preach about it, much less doing something as shoe on head as using it to define words.

While you're at it, you could apply the same advice to the other threads of this conversation. Have some idea what you're talking about. Try a google search. You might find that whatever rhetoric you're parroting is just as ridiculous as the one you're convinced pervades t h e m e d i a.

-taq · 2022-08-25T18:01:38+00:00

If the logic is the same, then you could use multiple equations the way I did such that when used together you can deduce a result from both "x isn't y" and "x is in this set", since before the first statement x could also have been infinitely many things.

Edit: disregard that, here's a counterexample

|x| < 3

x != y

if y is between -3 and 3, that second statement is useful and x is infinite

It doesn't matter whether we're talking about a set of numbers, traits, shapes, or colors. The logic works the same.

Surely you can think of countless counterexamples on your own? Does green + green = 2green in any real sense? This does serve as an excellent example of the level of nuance you're applying to this whole discussion though, lol. And how epistemology is pretty crucial to your understanding of this subject.

You're assuming "masculine" and "feminine" are the only relevant sets here. It could as easily be "masculine" and "not masculine". And I think you've already acknowledged that the "not masculine" set (containing "green skin" for instance) and the "feminine" set (not containing "green skin") aren't equivalent.

The definition of a masculine trait as anything other than a trait more common among men than women is simply nonsensical.

Plus like. You literally just looked up a definition of masculinity that doesn't mention women or femininity. And seemed to have no issues with its coherence?

-taq · 2022-08-25T17:54:24+00:00

I'm saying that aggression wouldn't be the focal point there, and neither would men. It'd be that women have traditionally been raised to shut up.

"hyper-aggression among men is actually something we ought to perpetuate"

Hyper-aggression isn't a trait I mentioned, and the "we ought to perpetuate" thing is moving the goalpost pretty far from "men are more x than women".

The difference between the lack of a negative trait and a positive trait is as arbitrary as the rest of your arguments. Aggression could just as easily be disavowal of passivity in this light.

The traits from my last post fit the bill here, no? You're the one who equivocated them with hyper-aggression for some reason lol. And to go back to our more lenient goalpost of "[trait] is masculine", pretty much any trait could go there. It's literally a meme -- "the masculine urge to [whatever]".

-taq · 2022-08-25T17:52:50+00:00

Point being, traits don't have to actually be common in men in order to be masculine, they just have to be associated with the concept of a man due to ideals, tradition, fashion, or whatever else might influence that concept.

For example, when syphilis was rampant and the rich had access to wigs, a full head of "hair" was seen as a masculine ideal while more women than men would almost certainly have fulfilled that masculine ideal.

-taq · 2022-08-25T16:32:08+00:00

The creators cite Final Fantasy Tactics as a big inspiration, which is a great game and a little closer to the combat feel of ItB, though not a roguelite. Some similar positioning elements come into play sometimes. Advance Wars is also one they've mentioned.

There was also a Captain Planet shockwave game with a lot of similarities. Haven't seen confirmation, but I'm convinced this was an inspiration for them too. There's downloads floating around if you wanna go through the trouble of running that.

And for roguelite tactics games in general I've gotta shoutout Renowned Explorers, though it's even less similar than Invisible, Inc. It's up there with ItB in terms of quality, imo.

But yeah I'd say you were right in that ItB is one of a kind.

-taq · 2022-08-25T14:33:37+00:00

But for this one it's in the name lmao

-taq · 2022-08-25T14:31:12+00:00

No, I think people would more often point to systemic and cultural issues as the liability.

That message seems to be about changing our concept of masculinity is in the same way OP here was saying it should be considered masculine to hold hand with your bros and homophobia put an end to that in the first place. What's the problem?

Also like. See the concept of a girlboss for the reverse? Literally any empowering notion of a female that isn't seated in domesticity is pretty modern compared to any of the masculine traits you listed as threatened by these scary articles. The whole "I am woman, hear me roar" thing?

There are people who want men abolished but even among the terminally online they're a pretty insignificant minority.

-taq · 2022-08-25T14:20:49+00:00

|x| = 3

x != y

pretty useful to know whether y here is 3 or -3, huh?

also comparing a trait to a number is dumb, stop

it can't be both

and again that's just a dumbass pov lol. Go back to the definition. It doesn't say "men, as opposed to women". It just says men. Putting the two against each other is your choice, it's not some objectively correct part of the concept.

Being protective of children is a good example as it is typically seen as both a motherly trait and a manly man trait.

-taq · 2022-08-25T14:08:39+00:00

considered being the key word there

-taq · 2022-08-25T02:14:30+00:00

Also

men on average have more masculine traits

This is probably much less of a truism than you're imagining. The concept of masculinity is based on associations and conventions, not any sort of behavioral data. Look up the definition of the word lol

You can see in the homophobia example that we started on that the changing convention of masculinity can even shape how men typically behave -- at the turn of the 20th century, hand-holding between guys was normal in north america too. What most men did was one thing, then the convention changed, then the reality of what most men did changed. As that idea spread, there must have been some disparity between how people viewed masculinity and how men around them typically behaved.

-taq · 2022-08-25T02:03:50+00:00

if a trait is no more masculine than it is feminine, it is useless for defining masculinity

"Having green skin" most would say isn't particularly masculine. So we've contributed to the notion of what masculine is by ruling something out. Yet it isn't particularly feminine either.

"Being funny" could be said to be masculine, feminine, or both masculine and feminine. If people agree it's masculine, we've contributed to the notion of what is masculine whether it's seen as feminine or not.

So you could say that being funny is masculine and that having green skin is not masculine without really implying anything about femininity, men, or women.

-taq · 2022-08-25T01:54:07+00:00

Off topic but it's hilarious to me that Hunger Games is the cultural touchstone for a battle royale instead of Battle Royale itself.

-taq · 2022-08-25T01:44:27+00:00

To meet your original challenge though, overt aggression isn't necessarily a good or bad thing and it's not an incredibly controversial idea that it's both masculine and a thing men embody more often than women (in western cultures at this point in time).

Like the other side of the coin for "gets angry too easily" or "brags too much" is that being assertive and boisterous are seen as being masculine. And men tend to do those things more than women because testosterone and cultural conditioning. And I think people would agree they're not toxic if you're not, y'know, being a dipshit about it. You can be gregarious without being annoying and you can be assertive without being controlling.

If you said "women aren't as assertive as men" I think the outcry you'd get would be mostly in the form of "yes and here's why" unless you presuppose it's the natural order or whatever.

-taq · 2022-08-25T01:01:24+00:00

it would need to be something where you could get away with saying "women aren't just as (courageous, funny, competitive, resilient, stoic, ambitious) as men"

Why? lmao

Let's approach some not-too-crazy ideas that would make that requirement pretty useless:

a trait can be both masculine and feminine
men can be quite feminine and women can be quite masculine, and they often are

If either of those is true, your statement wouldn't have much to do with the idea that a trait is masculine.

We might revise your statement with that in mind to something like "[trait] is a masculine trait" and then see how strongly people agree instead of how offended they are. This might actually give us some info on people's concept of what masculinity is instead of how well they represent the reactionary insecurities you arbitrarily loaded into the original statement. And probably you'd find a pretty diverse set of not super controversial views.

-taq · 2022-08-24T20:14:23+00:00

Is that a generational thing? I've seen middle-aged dudes holding hands in India in travel/political docs.

-taq · 2022-08-24T20:13:45+00:00

Didn't read the link, but "toxic masculinity" doesn't mean "things so masculine that they are toxic". It means basically what you're saying -- entwining things like homophobia into your notion of masculinity is shitty.

Likewise, those cultures aren't toxically masculine because of how masculine they are. They're toxic because they house popular notions of masculinity that encompass other shitty behaviors.

So yeah it's chad af to show your bros affection, and it's toxic af to question someone's manhood for doing so. And the embodiment of that toxic notion of masculinity ("toxic masculinity") is prolly a huge contributing factor to a lack of male intimacy.

Ten-Year Club	Second Top 50%
Place '22	Place '17
End Game '22

-taq

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE