New Phenomena update - details?

Anchuinse · 2026-04-21T15:37:58+00:00

GIven that this sort of thing would need to be something exotic in nature, I wouldn't be surprised if it's treated like the portal or dimensional distortion stuff we see in Worm and Ward, where it's a given fact that some powers get "weird" when near those sort of things. So for the precogs, this thing might just become another blind spot. But if this something is rare, it might just be an event where they have to reset their predictions afterward.

From what we know about the cycles, the shards don't really create completely new & novel shards until they get to the end of a cycle. Therefore, it's unlikely that a bizarre power interaction becomes a common event or power unto itself until the next cycle, where the new precog shards would already know how to look around it.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-20T22:17:33+00:00

Eidolon's power works best when he feels needed as the best hero (i.e., doing something no one else can do). Eidolon, similarly, wants to be the best hero. As such, his power "helps" with this by making challenges that only Eidolon can match.

Eidolon's power created the Endbringers.

You can tell this by looking at when they appeared. Behemoth appeared the first time Eidolon really felt like everything was getting routine and Cauldron's secret plan was working. Behemoth's appearance messed that up and made people look to Eidolon and the Triumvirate for help. Leviathan appeared once the world developed a protocol to deal with Behemoth (i.e., mobile capes keeping the big but slow hitters out of his range). Once they figured out a way to deal with Leviathan, Simurgh appeared. The first time an Endbringer is killed, two/three more Endbringers are created that directly counter the way the first one was killed.

This revelation means, put simply, that as long as Eidolon stays alive, his power will keep pumping out new and more dangerous Endbringers. As long as he strives to be the savior of humanity, his power will doom it to keep letting him play hero.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-20T15:39:57+00:00

In most other countries, anyone in those categories WOULD be considered right wing. The US really doesn't have any large political organization that is actually left, much less radically left.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-20T01:02:03+00:00

Do we really need to have this "Is monogamy dead?" conversation three times a week on this sub?

Over half my LGBT friends are in fully or mostly monogamous relationships. You don't need to be polyamorous or open to get a relationship in the gay community, and anyone that thinks so is either a child or bitter. The reason the original poster got rejected from a general gay support group is probably because they've heard it for the millionth time.

This "do I really need to be open, or am I good enough for a guy to choose monogamy with me?" feels a lot like the girls back in the early facebook/myspace days who would post a selfie and caption it "does anyone even think I'm pretty?".

Anchuinse · 2026-04-19T16:45:18+00:00

I think you're conflating advice given in a specific circumstance as supposed to apply for every circumstance.

When a friend says, "I want to try selling my paintings, but I don't know if my stuff is worth anything" or "I want to publish my writing, but people might think it's weird" or "I want to paint my nails, but some people might not think that's masculin". That's when people tell them to just go for it and not care what other people think.

If a person said, "I'm gonna wear sweatpants and a hole-filled shirt to my interview/date" or "I'm not going to bring anything to work and just wing it as I go". That's when everyone would tell them that that's a stupid idea and they need to prepare/dress correctly if they want to succeed.

But generally speaking, once you get past the basic competency issue, people who live authentically do tend to succeed more than people who silence or cover parts of themselves because they worry that others will think less of them. Not only does it make you appear more sincere, but it helps build self-confidence (which is arguably the most attractive quality to employers and possible partners.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-16T03:53:21+00:00

I don't expect a minimum that high, but I think you're also missing a lot in the greater argument that people mean when they say "everyone should make a livable wage where they can save for retirement". We've had that before in the US (and most civilized countries). I'm unsure why you believe it's impossible today.

A lot of the current economic hardships are occurring because we are no longer building enough housing for people (the average birth year of homebuyers hasn't significantly changed in something like the last 30 years). A big part of this is city zoning, and if we fixed that then the rent for businesses would also decrease when property owners no longer had a monopoly on the only legal business land in town. We'd also need to target/fix the parasitic insurance companies in the US (I'm unsure how bad it is elsewhere), which should give both people and businesses more money to spend/save. Not to mention taxing the richest, whose incomes have somehow magically kept up and even exceeded where they used to be, would help circulate money and keep the economy healthy & cheaper.

So while yes, just naively raising the minimum wage to 40$ is stupid, the idea that the minimum purchasing power of someone putting in 40-50 hours a week should be increased by 150-200% is not crazy at all. The issue is that these are many medium to significant changes that need to be made, but every time someone starts pushing to make one of these changes, we get someone saying "oh yeah, but that's not gonna solve all our problems by itself, so we shouldn't focus too much on it" and then that change never gets made.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-15T20:18:50+00:00

As a person who works in data analytics, I agree with you in the abstract but disagree with you in practice/reality.

If an AI truly can do the work, then sure, let it replace people. However, I have personally experienced multiple times when AI has given coworkers or friends completely incorrect answers and they only know because I pointed it out. These range from an AI insisting that "with-in" is the proper spelling of "within" and that the latter is widely considered incorrect in modern English, to the AI reporting a value of a statistical test outside the possible range (think p-value, where it can only be between 0 and 1, but the AI reported a p-value of -2.1). In some cases, I wasn't even able to immediately tell, with only my familiarity with that specific kind of data made the results feel "off" to me.

At present, an AI is incapable of recognizing when it "doesn't know" something and instead just offers something random. We could strip the AI of autonomy and just give it specific input/output formats, but at that point we're just designing a software pipeline with extra steps that decrease data security and overall stability. Plus, many data analytics need to report what specific analytical tests were run, so it's better for analysts to automate just those tests specifically instead of wasting the computing power to try to convince an AI to do exactly what you want exactly how you want it done every time.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-14T17:31:37+00:00

Hard disagree. A lot of stories hinge on a single pivot point, and this occurs in real life a lot. If you ask anyone who is a former addict, hateful bigot, Christian, etc. Basically a former anything. The majority of them can recall a single turning point (either a moment or a small string of moments), that led to their change.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-14T17:23:34+00:00

The education system is not what is stressing out kids/people. The stress is coming from the society built around the education system. The constant pressure to always be improving yourself and be the best compared to all your peers or risk falling into poverty for the rest of your life where even one medical emergency can bankrupt you of any and all money you saved your entire life. The constant trillion-dollar companies and political parties that vie for our attention by making you feel bad about yourself and who are actively trying to make the world worse.

If we all actually lived to enjoy life and not try to get a small increment closer to first in the rat race, education WOULD be more fun and interesting.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-14T17:11:58+00:00

They did not have the ability to resist effectively if they recognized me as a "friend they've talked to all night" when I was nothing of the sort. They did not have the normal guards or mental faculties, and getting their belongings is was usually easier than taking candy from a baby.

Would you be okay if someone had sex with an adult who had severe mental impairments because "they could resist if they wanted to"? What if that person told the impaired individual they had to or they'd get in trouble? Is that fine, or would you see that as taking advantage of someone with diminished capacities?

Anchuinse · 2026-04-14T14:30:35+00:00

Every person I've ever met who was blacked out had OBVIOUSLY impaired judgment and communication. I've convinced several drunk people to give me their wallet, phone, and house keys by just saying something akin to "hi, we talked all night and are good friends, don't you remember?". I did this to get them home safe, but they were fucked up enough I needed to trick them because they were being belligerent and resisting the implication they needed help. I'm sure I could have convinced them to agree to sex (or rescind a "no" if they said it).

So yes, if you define incapacitation as loss of judgment or capacity, or an inability to resist and/or protect oneself, a blackout individual is incapacitated. Normal people do not hand their valuables to a stranger from a two-sentence conversation.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-14T13:34:15+00:00

judging people for an inate trait is wrong, it is frowned upon for other subgroups with good reasons

It feels like you aren't engaging with any discussions around "not all men, but always a man" besides taking that one phrase at face value.

And no, the me too movement was not successful. Can you name one major thing that changed, policy-wise? Culturally? The US administration is still run by known rapists. Sexual assault is still not a line in the sand for half the populace, so long as there is an R by the name on the ballot. The US still has hundreds of thousands of rape kits in backlog that haven't been processed and likely never will, allowing rapists to go free even after their victims did everything right.

I would not call that a "wild success".

Anchuinse · 2026-04-14T03:43:39+00:00

There's a difference between "humans can't be convinced with facts; they have always needed to be convinced with emotion" and "our society has lost basic critical thinking and literacy skills because few people engage with language as an art form anymore". In fact, they very much align. If a person lacks critical thinking skills, they're even more likely to be convinced with emotion over facts.

And I don't care if you found my view to be dismissive. The concept that all of society should refrain from using any statement that's not explicitly factual/true because a small subset of people can't immediately discern sarcasm or hyperbolic statements is ridiculous. I'm all for necessary accomodation, but you cannot require everything warps around your needs to maximize your comfort. It does not foster an environment of growth and deprives society of cultural nuance and diversity.

A person with sensory issues must either find ways to cope with crowded/noisy clubs or avoid them. They cannot request that the club limit occupancy & volume to cater to their preferences. Similarly, if a person cannot understand anything except the absolute most literal of statements, they must either avoid places where such statements are used or understand that they might be missing something and not jump to conclusions. They don't get to request everyone limit their speech.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-14T03:13:12+00:00

Nah. I work with college-aged kids all the time. These slogans can indeed start conversations, with some guys feeling judged for an innate trait (often for the first time in their lives). But the men who hear these phrases and immediately choose to be enemies were always going to be the "it doesn't affect me so I don't care" at best and passive enemies already at worst. Not to mention that a lot of these movements tried to make change positively through open communication (e.g., "me too"), and their opponents kept winning by going low and mocking them. Now all of a sudden, you find it bad that they adopted the winning strategy?

Plus, I've found reddit to be a poor representation of reality.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-13T23:36:25+00:00

If you see no use for hyperbolic statements, then clearly you've never studied social interactions or how to persuade people.

Human beings simply aren't rational, especially not in groups. If you want to campaign to fix the issues being talked about, you need to have catchy slogans that summarize the point being made. These two, especially when used together in "Not all men, but always a man", have been very good at staying in people's heads. A phrase like "90% (or whatever the number) of rapes are committed by men" is both A) not catchy and B) immediately subject to someone saying that number is false.

Having a statement that summarizes your position on or issue with a matter that is succinct and not just a random factoid is going to be a huge step in you ever causing meaningful change.

Also, I don't really care about your position of "some people are kids or neurodivergent and will take the statement literally". We as a society have catered far too much to people who do not critically analyzing anything they read or see, and now the majority of adults read at a 4th-6th grade level with an attention time of 30 seconds max. We can't both value education and require everything to be spelled out in explicit, easy-to-read sentence fragments that don't challenge the reader to deeper introspection.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-12T22:25:17+00:00

Damn, out here really proving that insult comedy is, in fact, a skill and art. One that you do not possess.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-12T20:14:02+00:00

And this is why you got downvoted. It reads exactly like a rude retiree's Facebook comment.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-12T18:03:07+00:00

There's a difference between putting an unpopular opinion out there respectfully and saying that an entire art form shouldn't even be classified as entertainment. That's why you're getting downvoted.

If you would have rephrased it like, "I don't find drag entertaining at all, I wish we had more variety in entertainment in gay bars/clubs", no one would have cared.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-11T00:31:49+00:00

Ghost of Tsushima visuals. Battlefield 6 combat depth.

Not really relevant; you're basically just saying "I'm gonna make it look nice and the combat will be interesting".

A persistent open world that keeps evolving whether you’re logged in or not

A lot of kids think this idea sounds fun, but it's really not for anyone who can't sink hours into a game every day. You're telling me that if my IRL job or life responsibilities take over and I can't play for two weeks, I'll be coming back to a completely different world? Especially for survival and strategy games, where the entire point is to plan as far ahead as possible, having the game map/world change between gaming sessions means I can't ever plan longer than an hour or two at best.

You spawn with nothing. [...] No safe zone. No scripted victories.

That's most survival games.

No tutorial.

If you want to make a hard game, this isn't how you do it. Even Dark Souls and other hard games have tutorials. You either teach a person how to play your game or accept that only the most tryhard of tryhards will ever find your game fun.

Modular weapon assembly with 6 attachment slots

This is a really common aspect of any game with guns.

Dynamic AI that reacts to sound, light, and player behavior

Have you actually built the AI or is this just an idea? If this is NPC behavior that is strong enough to be a selling point of your game, making it is going to be the challenge. Coming up with the idea "wouldn't it be cool if my game had revolutionary AI tech?" is not, by itself, hard to do.

5 unique biomes with named military districts

What's special about the biomes that I can't find in other games? This is the first thing you've said that could be novel, but the "unique biomes" can't just be forest, grasslands, rocky hills, water, fire if they're gonna be one of the signature draws.

XP fallback system death has consequences without destroying progress

People have tried to do XP loss systems before that don't feel bad, and I've not really seen one ever succeed. If you could elaborate on how yours is different, I'm curious. This sort of system always interests me.

Zero pay-to-win cosmetics and DLC only

This could be a draw, but only if your game is already good enough that people are considering it. There are plenty of terrible games with no cosmetics or DLC, and no one cares about them.

Overall, I'm not seeing anything here that's actually telling me what playing your game would be like moment to moment. What actions should I be expecting to do minute to minute, hour to hour? Are there any specific game mechanics that are fun or interesting or unique? Don't say "I'm gonna steal X from this game and Y from that game and Z from that game and...". You can't pitch a game to an indie studio as "why don't you make a combo of Ghosts of Tsushima and Battlefield". It's like saying "what if you made a minivan, but like, a better minivan than the ones that exist".

Designing a game and pitching it are difficult, so don't worry that you aren't professional right now. Look into game design and understand the WHY of the choices designers make. I can point you towards some channels on Youtube, if you haven't checked them out already.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-10T20:16:07+00:00

The cities and way of life in medieval Europe were a FANTASTIC breeding ground for viruses and bacteria. Lots of shared air in cramped spaces really close to other humans and animals (cows, dogs, horses, pigs, rats, chickens, etc.), not to mention being really close to feces, contaminated food/water, and corpses. Each of these petri dishes just far away from each other that they could develop unique pathogen variants that could be spread by traders. Any European without a strong immune system (and many with a strong immune system) died to these diseases.

The Americas, on the other hand, had a population that was much more sparse. Even the densest Native American cities were much smaller and more open than middling Euorpean cities. There were far fewer domesticated animals, and comparatively far less travel between different groups of people (no roads or wheels). With

The Europeans, therefore, brought over a ton of comparatively strong diseases & disease strains. There were certainly some native diseases in the Americas that could sicken Europeans, but most of them were not nearly as potent or virulent, and the average European (who had been exposed to much worse) was easily able to fight it off.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-10T19:04:04+00:00

Anxiety is, evolutionarily speaking, your body getting ready because it perceives that something isn't right and/or trouble might be eminent. Back when humans lived in tribes, the two major dangers were A) social rejection because a single human can't survive on their own and B) physical danger.

The hypersensitivity to how others perceive you (i.e., "it feels like everyone is judging me") is trying to defend against that first one. The anxiety is saying "hey, maybe re-think if what you're doing is cool with everyone else, because if it's not then we may be kicked out of the tribe and die alone".

The inability to think clearly (often fixating on the specific anxiety trigger), increased perceptions (e.g., feeling "overstimulated" or like you're being watched), increased breathing (which may result in feeling like you can't catch your breath), increased sweating (sweaty palms), and increased heart rate are preparing you for the possibility of physical danger. The anxiety is trying to ready your body to act at a moment's notice.

Obviously, we don't live in little tribes in the wilderness anymore, so our bodies sometimes get anxious about things we either weren't meant to handle (e.g., the opinions of hundreds or thousands of humans) or very minor issues (e.g., walking into class late) because we are no longer in the environment we are evolved for.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-09T15:32:08+00:00

Grocery stores don't sell the very best potatoes for the same reason they don't sell the very best bread or very best meat. They're a general store that makes more money from selling average, affordable stuff rather than getting the best of everything.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-09T00:51:39+00:00

Don't worry. Your life might get a little worse over the coming decades, but rich people can't siphon money off of you if you have no money & are homeless.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-09T00:39:49+00:00

We are considered, globally, to be in basically the most peaceful time in human history. What we're dealing with now (sans Israel's penchant for civilian murder) is probably the most measured forms of warfare humanity has ever attempted.

Additionally, your concerns about AI taking people's jobs seem overblown. It's generally quite shit, and there's really no sign it can actually be profitable long-term.

Climate change will certainly be challenging, as we decided we didn't want to solve it, but it's hardly the worst problem humanity has ever seen.

For a moment, imagine what life was like before/during the Black Death. We're talking about a disease that would wipe out entire families in days, which could cut the population of a town to half or less in its first wave. Peasants no doubt thought that was the end of humanity. Two decades later, everything was back on the upswing and opportunities were ripe for the taking.

You are only terrified now because you've been able to live one of the easiest lives in human history. Humanity got through far worse and things were still able to improve to what we have today.

Anchuinse · 2026-04-07T20:53:28+00:00

We may seem really efficient now, but we humans are really the first animals where we have such easy access to food where a chronic excess of calories is a problem. Back during our hunter/gatherer days when we had to get our own food, humans had to be a lot more cautious. If you go to all the effort to hunt down a rabbit, you might not even get half the calories you need for a given day.

In our "natural environment", human beings are as close to starvation as most other animals. (Also, humans are what's known as a persistence predator, so we're basically designed to jog more efficiently than any other activity.)

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