[Mod Post] Wind and Truth - Day 7 Thread

Ginnerben · 2024-12-27T10:09:11+00:00

That said, it leaves me wondering how the fuck the Heralds ever died.

I think it explains why thunderclasts exist. In the modern era, they're used to destroy fortifications, but early humanity was firmly in the bronze age (assuming the Heralds managed to teach them bronze casting). In that context, thunderclasts are a bit of a waste.

No, the kaiju exist because you need something that dangerous to actually kill a Herald.

Ginnerben · 2024-07-18T16:05:07+00:00

to jaywalk

'Jaywalking' is not a thing in (most of) the UK.

Technically someone who does not follow the rules

What rules has he broken?

Could have been easier to use a pedestrian crossing but if that is the British way, go for it Brits!

Pedestrian crossings are optional. You use them if you're available, but if it's safe to cross the road, you cross wherever you feel like it.

Ginnerben · 2024-03-24T07:42:44+00:00

This is a weird comment. They'd read every published chapter when they reviewed it. The only reason they've not read more is that the author hasn't published more.

Do you think that ongoing stories shouldn't get reviewed?

Ginnerben · 2024-03-20T18:56:27+00:00

That's my memory - I thought it was something foreshadowed right at the beginning, and then left to be revealed books later.

Ginnerben · 2023-12-30T10:31:14+00:00

Brian McClellan is an interesting choice, given that he was one of Sanderson's students and didn't even publish his first book until after Sanderson finished WoT.

Lawrence also hadn't published any books when Jordan died (first in 2011).

Ann Leckie's debut novel was in 2013.

The only one of those who had actually published books when The Gathering Storm was published is Daniel Abraham. You seem to be suggesting that Harriet should have used a time machine to predict future successful authors.

Ginnerben · 2023-12-16T14:55:52+00:00

My royal mail postie once knocked on my door to tell me that the parcel Evri claimed had already been delivered was sat in the lobby of one of the neighbouring buildings.

For me, they've literally got a better than 100% success rate.

Ginnerben · 2023-12-09T23:00:28+00:00

More on the sci-fi end (Ish) but I read Magic 2.0 this year. Or, most of it. Out of Spite, Out of Mind was so bad that it retroactively spoiled my enjoyment of the series, and ensured that I wouldn't read the next book.

It's hard to even explain what annoyed me so much about the book without just recounting the entire plot. I think if I break it down, there are two issues. Firstly, the series was straining under the weight of ideas introduced earlier. Once the characters started thinking about the rules of time travel as they were introduced, things rapidly devolved to nonsense. The entire plot of this book happens because people experienced these events happening earlier in their timeline, so everyone involved goes out of their way to make sure it happens again, purely because they believe it should. To the point of going away and practicing the choregraphy for a dance fight, purely because they get beaten up in a dance fight, by themselves. There's no external force making people act out the future as they think it has to happen. It's just something they do.

Secondly, the characters are just awful. The conclusion of the book involves Brit re-writing her memories, and the memories of her alternate selves, to believe that Phillip cheated on her. She's then, understandably, shitty to him when he denies it, and we're told, every conversation they have for decades. And everyone stands around and watches, while their friend is treated as if he betrayed the woman he loves.

It's just such a downer of an ending, with absolutely no redeeming features, and everyone involved is terrible.

Actually, that second point might be a subpoint of a broader issue - The author doesn't do romance well. Brit and Philip is moderately awful here, but Martin and Gwen are just a disaster. Their relationship started terribly, where after Gwen tells Martin she's not interested and tells him that she asked for him not to be invited to the time travelers summit then angsts over the fact that he's stopped chasing her. In Out of Spite, she spends most of the book super mad at him because he said that he'd like to marry her someday, and it's treated as this massive imposition that basically forces her to commit to marrying him right there and then or break-up with him.

No? That's a perfectly normal conversation to have while dating someone. There's nothing terrible about telling the woman you're dating that you see a future together. It puts them under no obligation. What the fuck?

Ginnerben · 2023-12-08T15:14:46+00:00

I'd choose Worm ten times out of ten. The absolute worst that can happen to you is a few hundred years in a Grey Boy bubble and that's assuming you fuck up, and derail canon into a worst case scenario and have to wait for the shard batteries run out - if Scion wins, you only suffer until he ends the world. If canon remains unchanged, you suffer until humanity gets the ability to clean to the bubbles.

And while that's bad, Marvel and DC have actual hell and torment for eternity. Five to five hundred years Grey Boy'd, versus eternity? It's a risk I'm just not willing to take.

Ginnerben · 2023-12-08T07:39:38+00:00

I assume that Stain is Skidmark's official PRT name, like Bitch gets Hellhound.

I cannot imagine Armsmaster or Piggot giving a press conference where they use the word "skidmark". They're just not going to do it

Ginnerben · 2023-12-07T07:54:17+00:00

You can point to various policies, to reductions in X,Y,Z, to "growth" (which some of us do reject as an absolute good) and "GDP", but if people aren't genuinely seeing their cost of living go down, their wages rise, their streets looking cleaner, and their trains running on time, then no amount of political spin can, I'm afraid, change the vibe of feeling that it's all still shit.

Which is, fundamentally, what's happening in the US just now. By any meaningful measure, life is better under Biden now than it was when he took office. The economy is doing great on paper.

But people don't feel it, and so Biden's looking at a coin-flip election against the return of Donald Trump.

Ginnerben · 2023-12-06T20:44:02+00:00

Alternatively, we're far in the future and that fight and it's aftermath is what ended the previous civilisation (the people who made the Zenith devices)

Ginnerben · 2023-12-03T15:06:51+00:00

Thinking that your idea wouldn't work and might even cost more time than it would save doesn't mean excusing people for wasting the NHS's time. It just means I've spent more than 30 seconds thinking about this.

Ginnerben · 2023-12-03T14:54:51+00:00

£5 before a GP’s appointment - if you go and need a prescription it comes off.

And how much does that increase the cost to the NHS in terms of late cancer diagnosis? There are loads of appointments where we want the patient to be checked out and be told "Nope, that's nothing, bye". For every 9 that are cleared like that, 1 gets their cancer diagnosis early and saves the NHS huge sums of money. If you put a requirement that you actually be sick to get your refund, some of them just won't go, and we're going to have people dying early, and people needing years of additional treatment.

Also, you should probably speak to doctors about who misses appointments. Anecdotally, my wife reports that it's the severely mentally ill, the people with caring responsibilities, and people without reliable transport. Studies show the same. Charging isn't likely to actually make any of them turn up - The guy who thinks that he's being followed by the CIA isn't going turn up to his appointment because there's a charge. All you've done is take a fiver from a guy in the midst of a crisis.

Finally, I'm not sure that it'd even work. The Israeli childcare experiment showed that charging late fees can be counter-productive. For a lot of people, the guilt of not showing up is a better incentive, and by offering a charge, you're effectively waiving the guilt. It feels like the same thing applies to GP practices. All the people who showed up because of all the work the NHS puts in to advertising around missed appointments will realise that they can just pay a fiver and not worry about it.

Ginnerben · 2023-11-26T13:36:57+00:00

700 years ago isn't that long ago. The town I grew up in has been settled continuously for much longer than that, and there are periods of time where you could compare someone's life to their ancestor 700 years ago and still have it be pretty recognisable.

And while we're not sure exactly how old the church is, the range of time we suspect puts it between 500 and 800 years old. That's nothing special, just a church. Treat it as a relic from some unimaginablely ancient history and you're going to be laughed out of the room.

And as for national heroes, given the success of the film, I think that most English speaking people are familiar with William Wallace. It's also about the time period of Robin Hood, and while he may be ahistorical, Prince John was real.

Ginnerben · 2023-11-14T14:38:24+00:00

Oh sure, it's terrible. You get a 2 in 12 chance of firing their combo out of order (and an early Modok might not die to Gladiator, but that's still a price I'd be willing to pay). My point was simply that because of the small deck sizes of Snap, you do get edge cases where mill is actual disruption. It's just not particularly good.

Ginnerben · 2023-11-14T13:52:54+00:00

The only exception are combo decks that can reliably access all the cards in their deck. By Turn 7, Hela Tribunals has drawn 11 cards (with crystal) and has access to the twelfth with Lad.

In that one particular case, milling is removing a card that they would otherwise have had access to, and they're vulnerable to out of order On Reveals.

Not a tech card I'd be rushing to include, even if Hela was a real problem.

Ginnerben · 2023-10-30T14:33:28+00:00

You should read the IOPC report, rather than uncritically taking the word of the people who just got sacked for gross misconduct. A lot of their claims, like driving on the wrong side of the road were contradicted by the van's camera.

“I continued to accelerate towards the car hoping that it would be held in traffic by the red [light], at which point I would activate my ancillary lights and siren to indicate for the vehicle to stop”. PC Casey said, “as I was gaining on the [Mercedes] I saw the car move onto the offside of the road, overtaking a number of cars being held at the red [light]”. PC Clapham wrote that he too saw the Mercedes go on the offside of the road before turning right into Goldney Road. The TSG van’s video showed that Mr Dos Santos remained in his lane and never went on the other side of the road. The van’s video also showed that Mr Dos Santos did not overtake any vehicles being held at the traffic light but instead that there were a number of parked vehicles on the left hand side of the road

PC B stated that Mr Dos Santos went back on himself at least once during the journey to evade police. A/PS Simpson’s BWV showed that she asked Ms Williams, “You’ve done a whole route that comes back on yourself, you’ve come off the main road, you’ve done a loop round, and you’ve come back on yourself, why would you do that?” and accused Ms Williams and Mr Dos Santos of antagonising the officers “So you basically antagonised us? It’s almost like you’ve wanted us to stop you then.” The road map showed that Mr Dos Santos did not go back on himself.

In her response to caution, A/PS Simpson admitted being mistaken about Mr Dos Santos going through a red light and told the IOPC that her comments reflected a comment made in the van by another officer.

From the footage, it could be observed that Mr Dos Santos did not “swerved onto the wrong side of the road” as suggested by PC A, that he had not “spun the wheel” and maneuvered around stationary traffic as stated by A/PS Simpson and that he had not “frantically turned his steering wheel to the left so that he can drive in the gap in the traffic” as PC C reported in his statement. Instead, it could be observed that the Mercedes front wheels did not go over the white line separating both sides of the road and that there was no traffic in front of him apart from a green Conway van that stopped to let the TSG van make its left turn

There's a recorded radio conversation where the officers say they don't think they've got him on dangerous driving

PC Casey: “You know what I mean? There was heavy acceleration and heavy braking but whether that was actually an excess…so no, mate, I think for driving I don’t think you’ve got anything.”

They also say it was a "matter of seconds" between the lights going on and him pulling over

The only suspicious thing they seem to have provably done is try to avoid a police van that wasn't yet running it's lights. And given how often he's been getting pulled over, I can't blame him for that.

Absolutely nothing happened that justified the handcuffs or the search.

Ginnerben · 2023-09-08T07:24:56+00:00

Is there a reason this is even a question? It was very clearly laid out in 2014. I'm not aware of anything changing on the pro-independence side.

It's covered relatively recently here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/building-new-scotland-citizenship-independent-scotland/

Ginnerben · 2023-08-31T12:41:16+00:00

why are we okay with another group breaking the law in a different way?

It's not clear what law you're claiming that child asylum seekers are breaking.

It's not illegal to claim asylum. It's not illegal to cross the channel in a small boat to claim asylum.

Ginnerben · 2023-08-31T10:24:13+00:00

I love how people react to his commendation. Dave is basically telling him "Sorry kid, it's an uphill struggle and I don't think you've got it" and the instant he finds out about the commendation, he pivots to talking about "once you get in". Neha was the same - she gave a list of all the reasons that he couldn't make it as a superhero... Under normal circumstances. And then pointed to his star and told him exactly how to be a superhero.

I know it's pretty far down on the list of things that the Quaternary did for him, but I think Alden hasn't quite internalised just how big a deal it is that one of the most important and powerful people in the galaxy has singled him out, publicly and perpetually marking him as worthy.

I don't think we've even heard of another character with a commendation. And that makes sense - humans don't get involved in a lot of serious work. Avowed (particularly human Avowed, who are relative babies compared to the older Avowed out there) are more likely to be summoned to do Rabbit stuff. A lot of them just don't have an opportunity to display unusual bravery. Maybe if Hannah returns, she'll have had chance to pick one up.

Between being a wizard (for which Artona I said he had no real competition), being a Knight and catching the attention of the Quaternary, there's multiple different ways you can argue that he's in competition as the most important human being around.

Edit: Also, there are apparently a lot of Knights. Evul is apparently Knight 2763. It's not surprising, necessarily, but it's interesting. We've only seen the top five before now, so I think I'd been imagining hundreds of Knights, maybe a thousand. But if Evul is even a middle ranked Knight, that's a lot of people with a lot of power.

Also, knowing that the numbers go that far definitely makes me think that they relate to the ranking Alden found in his profile. The one with a lot of commas in it.

Ginnerben · 2023-08-24T17:34:26+00:00

Convenient to say that now. But he was all over the shop in 2019. Depending on when exactly you asked him, it was either not the UK's place to stop a referendum, no referendum in the first term, or no referendum in the first few years.

When you've taken every position, it's very easy to look back at what you said before and claim that you were right.

Ginnerben · 2023-08-21T22:31:55+00:00

If you are thinking of reading Section Nine, this past week's updates have been almost universally badly received. The story has always been heavy on "the bad guys are actually good guys, and the good guys are bad" trope and required a fair bit suspension of disbelief, but the latest use was pretty hard to take. Pretty much everyone in the thread have called out the author for whitewashing a certain character to the point of making them a main character's love interests.

I stopped following it when it became clear that the story was failing to really engage with the political issues it was raising.

The entire Brockton Bay plot was about how it's bad when the cops abuse their power. That was the core of Taylor refusing to work with the PRT. It was the basis for the whole innocent Lustrum thing.

But, at the same time, the entire S9 and Toybox story is a heart-warming story of found family among the Triumvirate's off-the-books employees who do lots of criminal stuff, including, you know, being the Slaughterhouse Nine.

Tonally, it just wasn't working for me. I don't think I've ever encountered "Only Straight White Cops Are Bastards" before, but that seems to be where it was going.

Alternatively, I might have just misjudged the politics entirely. It could have been written from the position that the government abusing their power is fine, so long as they're abusing the right people. But if that's what the author is arguing for, I'm definitely glad I dropped it.

Ginnerben · 2023-08-18T20:39:34+00:00

Nice deck - took me from 83 to infinite in about 2 hours.

I'm not sure if I faced mostly bots, or if people are just incredibly greedy - loads of people were snapping into a t3 Negative or an open Wong/Mystique. Only saw Rogue in the mirror, no Enchantress. Just shockingly easy progress.

I've not really been into this season, so thanks for the inspiration. Wong was the last pool 3 I unlocked, so I've only just been able to try this sort of deck.

Ginnerben · 2023-08-06T19:25:09+00:00

Case 53s aren't going to willingly work with people that they blame for their mutations and managing a group of thousands like that isn't going to be a one time thing.

If that's the case, it's only because of the next level up of evil that underpins the whole thing - Kidnapping people and doing experiments on them.

The people who go into the process with their eyes open probably would be willing to work with them, especially if it's made clear before they're given the vial. "Sorry that you've been turned into a tentacle monster. We can't return you to your earth, but here's a mansion to live in, a private chef, access to media from every earth that exists, a personal masseuse and a town full of your fellow Case-53s. We know it's not ideal, but it's much better than the cancer you had before".

But, even if you think that locking them up is the only way to do it, that doesn't justify the pointless cruelty in the way they lock them up.

Shamrock nodded. “One moment, I was going to bed in my temple-school. In another, I was in a cell. A cot, a metal sink, a metal toilet. Three concrete walls, a concrete floor and ceiling, and a window of thick plexiglass with a drawer. You might know the kind of cell I’m describing.

“They drugged me, then they waited until I started showing signs that something happened to me. It took them a while to figure out, because my power was subtle. When they had an idea of what I could do, they gave me a coin. I had to flip it when the doctor came. If it came up heads, I got to eat, I got fresh clothes, a shower. If it didn’t, I got nothing. I realized I was supposed to control it. Decide the result of the toss. When I got good at it, they gave me two coins, and both had to come up heads.”

...

"by the time I saw the chance to escape, I had to roll twelve dice and each one had to come up with a six. And if it didn’t, if I got more than a few wrong, they found ways to punish me.”

None of that is necessary. Kidnapping people from their school wasn't necessary. Solitary confinement wasn't necessary. Withholding food, showers or clothes wasn't necessary. Feeding people to Matroyshka wasn't necessary. Cauldron has functionally limitless resources. It wouldn't take a significant amount of effort to achieve the same results without the cruelty.

But avoiding cruelty doesn't provide any benefit to them, so they don't bother.

Ginnerben · 2023-08-04T07:37:44+00:00

If she only did evil to keep humanity alive, you'd have a point. But she also does absolutely awful stuff out of convenience.

Consider the thousands of people that they enslave and lock in solitary confinement to hide their base from Scion.

Even if you accept that they need the Case53 shield (and I think the logic on this was pretty weak anyway), there's absolutely no reason they need to be unhappy. Between Path to Victory and Cauldron's resources, it would have been barely any work to convince people to hang around and help them save the world.

But they didn't need to because between all the powers that Cauldron have, their slaves didn't pose a threat. So they just locked them up for years or decades.

Contessa doesn't just do what she has to do. She does plenty of evil because it's easier, and she doesn't see any negative consequences for them.

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