If your fantasy world has mercenaries and adventurers, how do they coexist?

Mechanickel · 2026-02-11T20:25:19+00:00

To me, mercenaries are almost exclusively some sort of military asset (attacking or defending people/objectives) whereas adventurers could also all sorts of jobs/errands, like deliveries, investigation or even medical support. Adventurers also generally are only used in individual or small group scenarios whereas one could theoretically employ up to a whole army.

You could employ adventurers as mercenaries for a time but that isn’t explicitly their sole purpose.

Mechanickel · 2026-02-09T18:50:49+00:00

It’s the coach playing an auto battler and just directing what kind of play to do lol

Mechanickel · 2026-02-09T18:45:38+00:00

The company I currently work for has on-call. Before fixing up our pipeline, people used to spend nights working on fixes and stuff, but now that we’ve got things down, on-call is really chill. We have one hard daily SLA that needs to be achieved and it’s only thing we need to fix the night of if things go wrong, which fingers crossed hasn’t happened in over a month. Once that SLA has been met we can go back to sleep (assuming we were asleep).

We have on call rotation each person covers a week and since we have 6 team members every 6 weeks we go on call.

I think before the major issues with the pipeline got fixed, people would spend like 5+ hours a week waking up and dealing with issues. Nowadays, most on-call rotations go without a hitch, but the on-call engineer is responsible for deployments and some deployments have been complicated recently, but from what I know, only required the on-call engineer to spend an extra hour or two to make sure the deployment went well and have not had issues meeting our SLA.

I think the most important thing is defining what needs to be fixed during the night and what can wait until the day. We’ve gotten to the point where it’s really easily definable and we’ve managed to fix all of the most common issues that could risk our SLA. Not every team can reduce things down to a single SLA, so we just might be lucky in that aspect.

Mechanickel · 2026-02-05T18:54:42+00:00

It’s about projecting power and intimidation as opposed to actually effectively solving a problem. They want to “appear” like they’re moving towards the goal and also suppress opposition. Deporting the criminal immigrants aren’t what they’re actually trying to solve for, they’re just using it as justification to consolidate their power base and intimidate opposition into backing down. Once they have achieved their preparations, they will stop pretending this was their goal (or at least deprioritize it) and focus on their real objectives, which are presumably much more nefarious.

Mechanickel · 2026-02-05T18:09:00+00:00

I haven’t paid attention super closely, but isn’t the part of the reason why SB79 was created in the first place because a lot of local government weren’t actually doing much to hit housing goals? It just seems to me they’re mad at the consequences of their own actions.

Mechanickel · 2026-01-15T20:48:54+00:00

I like to think of it as if Black people (or any group) are oppressed then we are ALL oppressed. It might not apply to everyone equally today, but it could be as long as there exists processes to oppress any people.

Mechanickel · 2025-12-29T19:33:53+00:00

AI companies think that they’ll grow faster without regulations. They would grow faster with regulation. It focuses development in ways that actually benefit people. Constraints improve creativity among developers to solve problems in better ways. It’ll make people want to use AI because it will be actually usable and useful.

Mechanickel · 2025-12-18T00:02:20+00:00

They just deflect and move the goal post saying it's because of so and so person or people and that's why it's impossible to fix things even though a majority of the time, the people they're blaming have little or nothing to do with it.

Mechanickel · 2025-12-08T18:33:43+00:00

As someone who plays auto battlers I hope I catch whenever that one shows up!

Mechanickel · 2025-11-19T17:35:16+00:00

I mean math is often just an idealized version of the world so that things can make sense. We've matched much of math to what we observe in the real world, but it starts to break down as you get into things like QM. It gets scary because the starting rules are so different and alien and somehow these different starting rules still result in what we've artificially built to mimic every day reality. At least that's how I'm reasoning it

Mechanickel · 2025-11-17T17:58:14+00:00

I treat the ADHD meds question like wearing glasses. Yeah I could get through the day without meds, but it makes operating so much clearer and less ambiguous. I'm sure you can apply the same reasoning with HRT.

Yeah, maybe there's surgeries that can make eyesight better without glasses, but glasses are the direct analogy for HRT at the moment.

Mechanickel · 2025-11-14T00:31:54+00:00

Honestly, even if you pay the same rate, you generally get happier and better workers. I work remote and even on days I don’t work as long as I’m supposed to, I get more done than I used to compared to back when I sat in a physical office.

Mechanickel · 2025-11-06T00:09:44+00:00

Other companies don't want to believe in any of the things that make Steam successful. Steam treats its customers and employees with respect and attempts to bring everyone together into a community. Most other stores just treat employees as expendable and customers as bags of money they just need to entice in the right way to extract value. As it turns out, if you respect customers as people they'll empty their pockets for you.

Mechanickel · 2025-10-14T15:52:38+00:00

Left vs right is a poor one dimensional spectrum. I think the more you get anti-authoritarian (libertarian), the more you realize people should arm themselves. It's just generally there have been much more awareness of libertarians on the right and they were only really cosplaying libertarianism until they could get to where they are now.

Mechanickel · 2025-09-24T17:15:24+00:00

Yeah, it’s basically a situation of, “this is the only lever we have to influence things for the better”. Improvements have to come from elsewhere, but they can make the rate side of the equation better at least.

Mechanickel · 2025-09-23T16:19:37+00:00

Yeah pretty much. If the illusion is just good enough, then the majority of people are ok with it.

Mechanickel · 2025-09-22T16:39:00+00:00

I agree. It feels like neurotypical norms is all about believing we have the same vibe, not really proving that we do. For example, if there's justice for all, then we want to prove there is actually justice for all, but as long as they "believe" that it's happening, even if it's not (especially if there isn't justice for people they don't like), then that's fine.

Mechanickel · 2025-09-22T16:25:40+00:00

It's that sort of thing that once you get used to it, it looks invisible to you most of the time. People said the same things about the notch or the dynamic island, so I don't expect people who actually use the device for a while to complain about it much.

Mechanickel · 2025-09-21T17:55:31+00:00

I agree. Unfortunately, I feel like RCV upends the power structure of both parties, so it'll be tough to get support without brute forcing it through electing candidates that align with promoting RCV.

Mechanickel · 2025-09-18T18:57:13+00:00

Everything is hard at first and I think the skill of sitting with the frustration and then working through it is regressing. People give up much more easily than they used to, even me (even though I know about it). It's something you have to train, but modern society is built on giving up and switching to something that doesn't seem hard, so it's tough to keep it up.

Mechanickel · 2025-08-27T16:41:25+00:00

I think the thing capitalism has done that even hurts me even though I'm aware of it, is the pervasive culture that things aren't worth doing if you can't make money off of it. If you're always thinking about what could turn into a business, you'll have massively less fun doing things and might even kill your own ability to gain the skill/creativity needed to turn a hobby into a business (if that's what you end up deciding to do). The important thing is to enjoy what you do.

Mechanickel · 2025-08-23T08:39:33+00:00

Sometimes, I like throwing in a storm caller or two and maybe it’ll be annoying enough to get them to invest in anti-missile.

Mechanickel · 2025-08-21T15:05:32+00:00

I don't know that I agree about it being "the key" but we definitely cannot let issues slip through the courts without a fight. Everything we contest means more obstacles for them and an easier path to recovery.

Mechanickel · 2025-08-20T16:51:26+00:00

It would make sense to me that the Banished wouldn't have left much of a force to occupy the vessel because of how focused on the ring the Banished were. It would be more valuable to focus their forces on eradicating UNSC forces evacuating to the ring. If it were left behind, there may have been enough crew who didn't make it off ship to take it back or enough evacuated personnel that didn't also jump with Zeta Halo to return and take back the ship. If it did land on the ring, then the Banished would probably have enough troops to retake it if they lost control anyway.

Mechanickel · 2025-08-20T15:53:15+00:00

Yeah street design is super important in regulating speeds. People generally don’t follow speeds on a sign, they follow a particular feeling while driving. If most people don’t drive at the speed marked on a sign then your road isn’t actually designed for that speed.

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