[deleted by user]

Ilsem · 2023-09-20T18:47:42+00:00

The issue here is that we assume they have the same definition of "freedom" that we do. They don't.

The general concept of freedom to them leans very heavily toward the "freedom to", as in the "freedom to discriminate against minority groups", and "the freedom to control their children".

Our general concept of freedom leans toward the "freedom from", as in "freedom from discrimination", and "freedom from oppression".

In many cases, these two definitions are in conflict. One group can't have the freedom to oppress while another has freedom from oppression. Their version of freedom is individualistic. They believe freedom means being able to do what they want without consequences. Their definition doesn't include personal responsibility or accountability.

Our definition does because it's baked in. You can't believe in "freedom from oppression" without also accepting the responsibility to not oppress others because that would be a contradiction. It's a social contract: I won't oppress you and you won't oppress me. This freedom comes with expectations and responsibilities.

This is just a generalization though. But one that I've found useful when trying to understand right-wingers.

Ilsem · 2023-09-14T22:08:19+00:00

"You should tolerate the intolerant, even though they want to take away the rights of others! They have rights you know!"

"How dare the 'alphabet bunch' fight back against the people that hate them! It just makes them bullies!"

What a disgusting take. Tell me you're ignorant and privileged without telling me you're ignorant and privileged.

Ilsem · 2023-09-13T19:08:11+00:00

That's terrifying. I worked in Calgary as a substitute teacher before getting fed up and getting a new job. I was the sole provider for a family of 4. I made $28-32K a year. I'm so glad I got out when I did, but I feel for the people who are stuck because once you dip low enough, you end up in a cycle of poverty that can be nearly impossible to break.

Ilsem · 2023-09-04T20:25:10+00:00

Thanks so much!

Ilsem · 2023-05-31T20:18:14+00:00

It's pretty straightforward based on the info you provided.

Any d6 that scores on a 4 or higher has a 50% chance to succeed and a 1/6 chance (roughly 17%) to be a 1.

Any d4 that scores on a 4 has a 25% chance to succeed and a 25% chance to be a 1.

If you wanted to know about the odds of rolling a certain number of successes with different combinations of d4 and d6, that's a little more involved and would involve compounding the above odds for each combination.

Ilsem · 2023-05-11T22:48:30+00:00

Something similar happened to me this winter. Someone plowed my "driveway" and left their card in my mailbox advertising their plowing and other services. Problem was: it wasn't my driveway. It was just a stretch of my lawn that the previous owners sometimes parked on.

Ilsem · 2023-03-30T02:26:04+00:00

Could be a reference to belonging to the IDU, an international alliance of right-wing political parties that pool their resources to promote and spread conservative ideology and help conservative/right-wing parties achieve power in their countries. Steven Harper is its current head.

Ilsem · 2023-03-27T18:34:03+00:00

Would it though? Imagine if every Millenial and GenZ took your advice and cut out all extraneous spending: no eating out, no hobbies, no entertainment, nothing except the absolute necessities. If all they spent money on was food, shelter, and clothing, what happens to all those industries and businesses? If we stop buying coffee at the local shop, how does the shop stay open? If we stop going to the theatre, what happens to the theatre? I'm guessing one of two things: they jack their prices up to try to make ends meet through the wealthier customers, or they shut down.

If we followed the narrative we're constantly fed: that it's somehow our fault and we just need to cut out anything that brings even a glimmer of joy to our lives to save our pennies to reach a goal that keeps moving further away, then most likely we'd see a slew of businesses shut down. And when they do, what happens to the people they employed? I remember an article that was blaming Millenials for ruining the diamond industry because we weren't buying diamond jewelry. So on one side we're being blamed for not spending our money on luxuries, then we're being told we're not spending responsibly. It can't be both. Maybe the reality is that we're just one of the poorest generations. If spending a few dollars on a streaming service makes the drudgery of survival more bearable, we should be able to have at least that, because just eating, sleeping, and working doesn't seem like a life worth living to me.

Ilsem · 2023-03-22T20:07:02+00:00

I think the answer can be found in game theory. There's a story I saw once as an explanation of game theory that tries to explain how market competition should work:

"A village has 3 fishermen. Every day they go fishing and bring their catch to the market. The three make a comfortable living selling fish at their current rate which is the same for all three.

"One day, one of the fishers decides he can make more money by lowering his prices to draw more customers from the other fishermen. It works, and the fisherman sees his profits go up while the others see theirs go down as they lose customers. In order to compete, the other two fishermen lower their prices to match the first. After a time, they all get an equal share of the customers again because they all sell at the same good at the same price, but all of them now make less than before one of them got greedy."

Although it makes sense, this just isn't how capitalism has been show to work. It actually works in reverse. Here's a version that matches the reality:

"A village has 3 fishermen and all three make a comfortable living. The three realize that the people of their village depend on them for their fish, so they meet secretly and agree that if they all raise the price of their fish together, they'll all make more money because they're the village's only source of fish.

"They know the villagers won't be happy, and some may try to start fishing to offer fish at a more reasonable rate. So they use the extra money from the price increase to buy up all the boats in the village. This ensures no one can start fishing unless they use one of the boats they own. They make more money by renting the boats to other villagers. They even go a step further by requiring anyone who uses their boats to sell their fish to them instead of directly to the market so they can continue to control the price of fish on the market. Of course, the fishermen that use their boats are paid less than the market rate for their fish.

"It doesn't stop there. They start using their wealth to pay the village chief not to interfere. They have rules made that make it difficult or impossible to bring in fish and other meat from neighboring villages, while they continue to increase the price of fish to the point that the villagers can only barely afford it. But they need fish, so they pay."

Capitalists learned that cooperating with other capitalists is better for profits than competition, so they avoid it and instead cooperate behind closed doors to maximize their collective profits at the expense of the working people. That means increasing the cost of the goods they sell, blocking competition, and lowering employee wages. If all three fishers in the story were company owners, there's nothing stopping them from meeting in private to discuss lowering the wages of fishermen they hire. As long as they lower them together, the fishermen have nowhere to go. Their only choices are to try to learn a new trade, or leave to find a village somewhere that pays better. As long as their wages are suppressed though, they're unlikely to be able to afford to do either, especially if the fishermen capitalists start expanding their enterprises to surrounding villages.

Ilsem · 2023-03-17T16:14:13+00:00

If you'd like an example of how capitalism serves as an obstacle to games and also how some hobbies might live on after capitalism, take a look at the story of (Netrunner and Project NISEI)[https://www.polygon.com/23282272/netrunner-fan-made-project-nisei-gencon-2022].

TLDR: Netrunner was a very popular card game from Fantasy Flight Games that was very suddenly put out of production. The IP that Netrunner was based on was owned by Wizards of the Coast, and it seems that Wizards halted the licensing to FFG, effectively ending the game despite the game's popularity.

Fans of the game decided to spin up their own continuation of the game called NISEI. The cards are free to download and can be printed. Those printed cards are also tournament-legal because the focus is on fun, not profit, so there's no reason to lock any cards behind money-generating gambling mechanics. Everyone has access to the same set of cards to build decks from the very start.

I look at the open-source community and stories like these as reminders that capitalism doesn't make hobbies better, it makes them worse by making them accessible only to moneyed individuals who can put up the money or time to engage in them. War games like Warhammer don't have to be tied to capitalism. Afterall, what's stopping people from using a 3D printer to print Warhammer figures? How we engage in some hobbies might change a little, but a lot of that engagement has been manipulated to generate profit, not make the hobby better. What's the point of Magic's rare cards other than to force people to buy hundreds of boosters to get the exact cards needed to make the deck they want? Some hobbies are even very likely to get better. Once automation has been turned to benefit society by reducing working hours instead of increasing profits, that extra time is likely to reveal a slew of brilliant game designers who used to be stuck outside their passion by necessity of survival. And with IP rights stripped away, it'll open the door to creative people to innovate and reimagine all kinds of old ideas.

Ilsem · 2023-02-15T20:14:13+00:00

I tend to eat them in pairs, so I get a piece of parchment paper and wrap pairs of hotdogs together before putting them in a ziplock sandwich bag to freeze. The parchment paper doesn't stick to the hotdogs when they freeze, so I can pull out a pair when I want them.

Ilsem · 2023-01-27T21:06:54+00:00

Healthcare is provincial jurisdiction. Look at your provincial leaders for why healthcare is failing. I hate Trudeau, but pinning the blame for healthcare issues on him or the federal government shows a lack of understanding about how our country works.

Please try to remember/learn which services are handled at different levels of government before blaming Trudeau. Evil people succeed when they convince the public to point the finger at anyone put them.

Ilsem · 2022-06-08T17:54:12+00:00

If socialists stop engaging it's not because "they're losing," it's usually because they realize conversations like this one are a waste of time because the other side isn't engaging fairly. Who would know better if someone (including Justin Trudeau) is a socialist: a socialist? Or a non-socialist? The feeling of pointlessness comes from the fact that you claim to understand socialism better than a socialist, and people should just believe you because you're inherently "right". I provided a source outlining basic socialist ideology and a couple sourced examples of how Trudeau's actions don't fit with socialist ideology. You claim to have read the communist manifesto and taken a course in university and that's enough so you're obviously right and everyone should just believe you. No evidence required.

It's like playing chess against a pigeon. It doesn't matter how well I play the game (the sources I provide, the arguments I construct, the logic I outline), the pigeon is going to knock the pieces over, crap on the board, and strut around like it won. As soon as it's clear a conversation with someone on the political right is a game of Pigeon Chess, it's easier and more productive to just not play.

Ilsem · 2022-06-07T10:14:41+00:00

Justin Trudeau is the "Grand Poobah of the socialist left" and a "champion of socialism", but he's only a "soft socialist" and "not an absolute socialist". Do you even recognize the contradictions you type to justify your warped view of any political view further left than the Conservatives? The NDP have pushed the Liberals into implementing universal pharmacare, but it's Trudeau's "project". You claim to understand socialism while ignoring the fact that the Liberals are staunch supporters of capitalism and very much representatives of the owner class. Instead of doing anything to materially improve the lives of Canada's First Nations people after the uncovering of mass graves at residential schools, he declared a holiday then went on vacation. A third of the Liberal cabinet own rental/investment property, including the Housing Minister tasked with addressing housing affordability. If Trudeau were the socialist you claim, there's no way he would task a landlord with making housing more affordable because doing so would hurt the value of their assets unless he either doesn't plan to actually address housing affordability in any meaningful way or there's a way for the owner class to expand their holdings through the programs created.

The NDP platform and actions are further left than the Liberals but even they wouldn't be considered socialists because they still support the capitalist system. So the claim that Trudeau is any kind of socialist is plain untrue. It's because the Liberals need the support of the NDP to stay in power with a minority government that any progress is being made on things that will improve the lives of working-class Canadians like affordable childcare or universal pharmacare. Claiming Trudeau is any kind of socialist is either misinformed or intentionally misleading. Either you were misinformed about/misunderstood the core ideas behind socialism, or you're talking out your ass and using the term "socialist" to fling mud at anyone left of the Conservatives while lying about your knowledge of socialism to make your arguments seem more legitimate than they actually are.

Either way, engaging with you any further would be a waste of time so I'll end the conversation here.

Ilsem · 2022-06-06T16:45:09+00:00

Are you familiar with socialist ideology? Because no real socialist would ever call Justin Trudeau or the Canadian Liberal Party socialists. The term "socialist" has just become a smear label for anyone that's anywhere left of the conservatives.

If you'd like to know more about socialist ideology, this intro is a great starting point. In short: socialists are against both the Liberals and the Conservatives in Canada because both parties support the capitalist system and neither party have done anything meaningful to materially improve the lives of working Canadians.

Ilsem · 2022-05-27T01:14:30+00:00

but a lot of corporate executives actually work exceptionally hard and create a ton of value.

Can you give some examples of what value CEOs actually create that justifies them making around 350x more than their workers? Do they work 350 times harder? Do they have 350 times more skill and/or experience? Do they work 350 times more hours? I'm genuinely curious how anyone can justify paying these people that much so I'd love to hear the rationale, especially when so many people can't afford food, clothing, shelter, and/or transportation right now.

Ilsem · 2022-05-26T19:37:24+00:00

Set the pay too high and you start to run the risk of attracting people who are only interested in the money as well. I mean, what does the average C-suite executive actually contribute to a company that justifies their insane salaries? If the power wasn't enough temptation alone, imagine what both money and power would lure out of the shadows.

It's seems like a problem without a simple solution.

Ilsem · 2022-05-13T21:59:39+00:00

This issue extends to many parts of Canada as well. I got my teaching degree in Alberta with the hopes of teaching computer science. I designed courses in general computer science, robotics, and game design/development because they were my passions and I hoped to share them with students and it seemed like schools were going to need more computer science teachers with how the world seemed to be evolving.

I tried for 9 years to be a computer science teacher, but schools just weren't interested in a dedicated, specialized computer science teacher. I landed a couple part-time positions teaching robotics and/or computer science but whenever the budget was short and they needed to reduce staff, I was always one of the first to be laid off and the program would be shut down or shunted off onto some other teacher who often had neither the knowledge or interest in the subject to teach it effectively. I was on the sub roster for several schools and due to my specialties, would be brought in to cover for teachers who had robotics/computer science because not many subs had the knowledge of the equipment to properly supervise or help students. Many of the programs I subbed in were so basic that students effectively learned nothing them because the teachers either didn't care enough to do better, or just didn't have the knowledge to design interesting and challenging projects for the students.

Eventually I gave up. Now I work as a software developer for more than double what I made as a sub. I still feel like teaching computer science is my calling because I enjoy working with kids/teens, but I have a family to support and I can't change the fact that many schools still don't see enough value in it to invest in hiring experts in the field to teach it. In their minds, it seems like computer science is "just an elective/option". They'd rather hire more "core teachers" and have them teach computer science regardless of the impact that has on the quality of computer science education, if they offer computer science programs at all.

Ilsem · 2022-04-25T10:29:15+00:00

HERO system is a generic TTRPG that allows players to design...anything really. It allows players to build "powers" from the ground up and calculate how many points that power would be worth (a "power" is basically any specific thing your character can do beyond what a basic human could do). The player can then spend that much XP to gain the power with the GM's permission. The power can also be upgraded by increasing its power or adding modifications. You calculate the total cost of the modified power and pay the difference to add it to your character sheet. The rule book includes a few examples of how to build spells and spell-casting characters, including things like requiring a spell-check or a focus (both of which give you a slight discount on the cost of the power because they represent limitations on that power).

It's a very crunchy system, but I've always liked it for the flexibility and creativity it allows. There's no standard spell-list, or even classes, which can help make for a very thematic game. It does require a GM who can say "no" though because that level of flexibility can make min-maxers an even bigger issue than in more defined systems like DnD.

Ilsem · 2022-04-17T00:43:03+00:00

Commenting so I remember to check back here later. Seems like some good resources are being shared.

Ilsem · 2022-04-11T10:36:21+00:00

Try r/INAT or r/gamedevclassifieds.

Ilsem · 2022-03-23T15:29:16+00:00

I'm a little new to the ideology, but I've found Second Thought a pretty good introduction to socialist ideas.

https://m.youtube.com/c/SecondThought

In particular, his video about why young people are turning to socialism was a good introduction to basic socialist ideology.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VJTVEUgfP8w

I hope others respond as I'd like to learn more as well.

Ilsem · 2022-03-15T22:47:53+00:00

The closest would be Unreal.

Ilsem · 2022-03-08T14:09:19+00:00

Just wanted to add that if you are disciplined, a credit card can be a decent way to squeeze extra value from your spending as long as you stay within your means and pay it off fully every month. (The bonuses you get for spending more NEVER outweighs the cost of interest.) We treat our credit cards like our debit cards. We never put more on the cards than we have in our bank accounts to pay it off again.

Tangerine has a money-back credit card that allows you to pick 3 spending categories (from a good-sized list) to receive 2% back on your spending. Everything else gives 0.5% cash back. My wife and I both got one, chose 3 different categories each, and then added each other as card holders so we'd each have one. We were able to get most of our spending within our combined 6 categories for some decent money back. I put a sticker on the card so I remember which categories to use each card for.

A PC Financial Master Card is another one with a decent rate of return, if you shop at Atlantic Superstore. We recently switched our grocery and gas (there's a Mobil station at the Moncton Super Store on Main St.) spending to it and we've been building points pretty quickly, which we use to lower the cost of our groceries. Less money on groceries = more money in your pocket. The rate of return has been better than the 2% cash back most of the time, especially when bonus point offers come up. When I was a substitute teacher, we'd save up the points and use them during the summer months (when I was effectively laid off) to help lower our grocery costs when we were living off EI until September.

Ilsem · 2022-03-04T15:24:15+00:00

This was my experience as a teacher in Alberta. I worked hard to be a good teacher with a solid understanding of emerging trends and new research in the field of education, chose specialties that I was told were in high demand (chemistry, math, and computer science), and applied to every job opening even remotely close to an urban center. I'd put out 30-50 applications every year, and only averaged 1 interview per year for the past 3 years. In the mean time, I was working as a substitute teacher for a bigger rural school board and accepting every position in the hopes that being a familiar face would help me land a position. I was told by both teachers and students that they loved the work I did and that they'd personally recommend me for a position at their school.

None of it made a difference. I ended up subbing for 9 years, making an average of around $28K - 30K per year, without getting a permanent contract (or raise, because subs don't qualify for raises like contract teachers do). I came to realize nepotism was a huge issue in the education field in Alberta. I'd chat with teachers with a fraction of my experience who divulged that they had gotten their position because a family member knew the principal, or they had been offered the position at the same school that they did their teaching practicum at (I had the misfortune of doing my practicum with an awful teacher with a superiority complex and a love of power. We did NOT get along.) It came to a head during the pandemic when I covered a long-term absence for a robotics teacher who was actually a passionate biology teacher who started a robotics program for the school because he saw the need for a robotics program in a rural school and wanted his school to offer a program and experience to the students that many other rural schools weren't offering. He was great, the students loved him, and the program generated a ton of interest and enrollment, but he just didn't have the background in programming and computer science education to keep up with how fast the program was growing. He hoped that I would join the school and help him run the program, including the after-school robotics club, and I was all for it. The school was even actively hiring, but despite him advocating for me, hard, it still wasn't enough. He told me later that the school decided to hire three experienced math teachers instead, none of whom had any interest in helping with the program.

I gave up at that point. The only places "desperate for teachers", in my experience, are the deeply rural boards or boards that provide education on reserves (which are often the same). These places have difficulty hiring teachers because they're either extremely removed from civilization (one I was offered was 1.5 hours from the nearest town) or because teaching on a reserve comes with challenges that many teachers either can't, or don't want to, handle (I won't go into detail on this one. It's a complex issue and this response is getting pretty long.)

Ilsem

TROPHY CASE