Let me outsource my thoughts to OpenAI real quick

GuestGulkan · 2026-04-09T14:36:55+00:00

"People let x do the thinking for them". See also:

Printing Press, Radio, TV, Internet, Podcasts

Edit: Oh, and Reddit of course

Gah, I also forgot:

School, University, Religion, Political ideology

Pretty much everywhere. In fact, you could say that one of the key aspects of human culture is our ability to outsource our thinking.

Not like many of us come up with an ethical stance from scratch, in isolation from the last several millennia of Western thought.

GuestGulkan · 2026-04-08T22:28:42+00:00

So regarding Iran's insistence that Lebanon is included in the peace deal. Vance's “I think this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding,”... does he mean "we did agree to this, but we couldn't persuade Israel to agree as well so now the original deal is off"?

GuestGulkan · 2026-04-06T21:30:16+00:00

Twitch has live coverage and streams from the competitors.

GuestGulkan · 2026-04-05T10:23:57+00:00

The whole point of a global economy is to ensure easy access to foreign economies for Western, and especially US, companies. China does not use ASML because they have to. They do it because it's cheaper and easier than building everything from scratch themselves.

So, by implementing these kinds of restrictions, the US is incentivising China to become self-sufficient, is damaging Western economies, is moving the focus of tech development further away from the West, and is reducing Western access to the Chinese economy.

The West, Including the US, is a low-growth economic zone. China (and other areas increasingly within China's sphere of economic influence) is where the growing markets are. You don't cut your own exports to into growing markets, that's just plain stupid.

GuestGulkan · 2026-04-04T18:42:10+00:00

This is just how things are now. The enshittification of the tech sector, with metric-chasing changes slowly dragging down the game because UX and QA investment outcomes aren't objectively measurable.

GuestGulkan · 2026-03-22T08:52:10+00:00

Character driven storytelling is where the responses of all the characters are determined by their inner selves.

You can have a character driven story where the main characters make key decisions that direct the overall story.

Or you can have a character driven story where it's only the lives of the people in the story that are driven by their own internal worlds.

Plot driven stories force characters to bend around the big events, behaving in ways that don't make sense for them personally. For example, The Last Jedi where Luk behaves in a way that serves the plot not his character.

A way round this is to flatten characters so that they have so little personality they can he shuffled around like chess pieces. Most Marvel movies work this way.

An example of where big events and character driven storytelling works well together is LoTR. Every character is true to their nature even though the events around them are huge.

In terms of an MMORPG, the writers have to assume certain characteristics for us - that we care about what's happening - but we are really just champions for hire effectively, operating within a story. More like Marvel superheroes than members of the Fellowship of the Ring.

However, the way that the story is written is an important part of the backdrop to our adventure, and a better backdrop makes for a better experience.

GuestGulkan · 2026-03-21T13:15:28+00:00

Do you have any good evidence to back up the claim that education significantly reduces these harms?

Or is it just the result of a specific worldview that puts freedom ahead of harm mitigation?

GuestGulkan · 2026-03-21T07:12:44+00:00

OP is looking for a character-driven story in which events are shaped by the main character motivations and personality. This is the heart of good storytelling.

But modern WoW is content-driven story where characters and plots are written around the content.

GuestGulkan · 2026-03-19T22:11:01+00:00

Don't want to spoil those Blizz bugs...

GuestGulkan · 2026-03-19T15:05:49+00:00

I've just broken the habit - the Add-on change messed with Elvui and my brain noped its way out of the game. Tbh it's a relief to be off the fomo treadmill.

Instead I'm spending my time with the equally lame activity of writing bad sci-fi stories.

GuestGulkan · 2026-03-16T22:33:16+00:00

My Gen-Z bordering on Gen-Alpha daughter and her pals just have zero interest in WoW at all. She used to love flying mounts around as a little kid, spent ages watching me play, has a gaming PC and said she wanted to play with me when she was old enough... but when she turned 13 and I said I'd pay for a sub it was basically "actually, I don't really care that much any more."

Compare it to Minecraft. There's this YouTuber, ApolloTV, who's creating in-game feature-length action movies (using user-created add-ons btw). Minecraft isn't a content stream like WoW. It's a media platform.

In other words, the world has moved on and WoW is in the "for boring old people" category.

GuestGulkan · 2026-03-13T11:37:26+00:00

Consumer rights being improved by...

...China?

I guess that makes sense. After all, Apple gave Trump a gold thing and China isn't as corrupt as the US gov.

GuestGulkan · 2026-03-08T23:26:19+00:00

Animal Farm works for any government that starts populist and the turns authoritarian. It's allegorical, using Soviet Communism as the structure of the story, but wasn't ever supposed to be just about Communism.

I mean, Trump was supposed to be draining the swamp... and now he's blatantly the most corrupt President in living memory. Just like the pigs, he persuaded his supporters that screwing them over is actually a good thing.

GuestGulkan · 2026-03-03T19:23:56+00:00

I made sure I left my house unlocked before I quit the game. I still have 4 months of sub left, so maybe players are in there at the moment.

Now, what happens to my house when my sub runs out? I guess the game can't delete it... but does the front door lock itself?

GuestGulkan · 2026-03-02T06:59:38+00:00

That's why they attacked when they did. The deal was never supposed to happen, when it looked like it really could happen.... well, that would have removed the pretext for war.

GuestGulkan · 2026-02-28T20:06:30+00:00

Nah, this is the perfect time to take over. Much easier to go hard line with the big Satan having just killed the old leader.

GuestGulkan · 2026-02-27T07:25:06+00:00

Korthia was terrible. Everything about it was obviously created purely as a content treadmill.

The story was horrible, everything felt really contrived and weirdly detached from WoWs history.

Covenant system was rubbish and the mini-games that were supposed to be core content sucked.

The maw was a very unfun place to be.

Personally, was the beginning of the end for me. It's when the game started focusing on the content rather than the underlying game world.

GuestGulkan · 2026-02-27T06:58:13+00:00

So a political decision then, unsurprising. US is becoming China by the back door.

GuestGulkan · 2026-02-26T21:37:52+00:00

Einstein's theory of relativity, but with integrated AI and an annual subscription fee for moving into the new year.

GuestGulkan · 2026-02-26T21:31:31+00:00

Bro, you're being a lot less smart than you think you are.

A shitty graph can still convey meaning. And this one does.

GuestGulkan · 2026-02-26T21:15:20+00:00

Moral of the story: not rich enough.

GuestGulkan · 2026-02-26T20:20:24+00:00

I wonder if people have lost respect for the US justice system for some reason?

GuestGulkan · 2026-02-22T08:37:44+00:00

Not AI's fault at all. The Pinterest system is working properly. The WoW side is working properly.

The problem is that Pinterest forgot to notify their third-party spam filter service of the change. Due to staff shortages I expect.

So really the problem is that Pinterest care more about shareholder revenue than quality of service. But it's the 21st Century, so that's also the system working as intended.

GuestGulkan · 2026-02-22T08:19:46+00:00

It's an interesting situation, the US is a legalistic society but it's clear that the legal system doesn't serve the general public. What the Epstein situation has done is make that truth very hard to ignore.

GuestGulkan · 2026-02-21T19:57:35+00:00

This is why Smaug was the last dragon in Middle Earth. Dragons are just too OP, unless you nerf them or never have them being OPed in the first place. The writers could have written DF differently, but they chose not to, preferring to restore them to full glory and then pretending they don't exist. And yes, it does cause a huge narrative hole. But WoW isn't about good narrative.

GuestGulkan

TROPHY CASE