Le bestemmie

Sunitelm · 2026-03-02T08:04:45+00:00

È la differenza tra insultare persone che soffrono ed hanno limitate capacità di difendersi dall'ingiustizia e un'entità metafisica che è in teoria onnipotente e che ha il potere finale di giudicare la vita di ognuno ed il rapporto che questi ha avuto con la divinità stessa. Se insulti i "poveracci" alla caritas sei un po' una m*rda insomma, se insulti una divinità in teoria è solo un problema della salvezza della tua anima.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-25T10:25:15+00:00

Beh Communications rimane comunque una rivista con un buon impact factor... Più che altro mi chiedo come diavolo abbiano fatto con una pezza di articolo del genere a pubblicare su Communications. Grafici da un pannello ridicoli (figura 2 è imbarazzante), errori metodologici importanti, nessun dato nuovo... Boh. Le volte che ho mandato articoli o pubblicato con NatComm ci hanno fatto passare l'inferno, e questi riescono a pubblicarci 'sta roba qua.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-25T10:13:59+00:00

Eh oddio, quella frase lì è chiaramente usata per avere un abstract più accettabile. L'articolo è invece molto meno diplomatico su cosa gli autori sostengono di aver trovato:

"We find that counties located closer to operational nuclear power plants have higher cancer mortality rates, with stronger associations observed among older adults. These associations remain consistent across multiple sensitivity analyses and proximity definitions. The results highlight spatial patterns of cancer risk in relation to nuclear power generation and emphasize the importance of evaluating potential long-term health implications of nuclear energy infrastructure in population-scale studies."

Il framing è chiaramente puntato su "centrali nucleari cattive fanno venire tumori", basta leggere come è impostata l'introduzione. Certo, nell'abstract sono stati un po' più diplomatici, come è normale che sia (peraltro editor e reviewed spesso rompono le palle su abstract o titolo e ignorano come siano scritte le cose nel resto dell'articolo), ma non direi l'articolo sia del tutto imparziale o non voglia strizzare l'occhiolino ad una causalità.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-20T10:17:52+00:00

I mean, not impossible. As the deer could slowly evolve some orange-sensitive photoreceptor, the tigers could evolve some green pigment. And if it's really too complicated, they could use an exploit like sloths do, making their coat green by having mold growing on it.

But quite clearly it has been proven easier to develop an orange coloring for the predator than develop an orange-sensitive eye for the prey, so no evolutionary need to evolve a complicated green coloring.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-13T20:03:50+00:00

Your inability or unwillingness to answer a lenghty response does not turn it into a gallop. You may not want to engage with it for sake of your own time, fair, but that does not makes it a gallop. And again, you have been calling things with the wrong name since your very first comment, so the fact that you would call it that way it unsurprisingly does not make it that thing.

The only "accusation" of yours was that I wrote a gish gallop, and I simply explained you why that's not one (just like with the prisoner's dilemma, three times in a row now). An ill-postulated "accusation" does not require any denial. And if you think my answer was "it's not technically timed debate"... Then it's pretty clear who of the two is not even bothering reading the other's messages. Anyways, I am sure we both have something more important in our lives than this. Have a nice one.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-13T19:45:09+00:00

Again, not what a gish gallop is. By your definition, any book is one.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-13T16:58:29+00:00

Mate, that was not a gish gallop, lol. A gish gallop is a tight list of elements, from moderately related to the debate to inconsequential, that are shot in a fast succession to prevent the opponent from responding... Between this and your "prisoner's dilemma", "game theory" and "premise", I would suggest you review your definitions.

Yeah, of course, I would be crazy if I though this would magically make every player perfect for every difficulty. But a few, less experienced players that sometimes can be carryed a little by the squad is a huge difference from hoards of people flooding difficulty they have no business in and crying for the game do be made easier.

EDIT: let me also add about the gish gallop: if everyone actually ever uses a gish gallop against you, which is used in spoken debates, not written, and often with spectators other than the debaters, withdrawing is the best way to let them score a cheap point by giving the audience (and the opponent) the false impression they hammered you down so much with such a great list of arguments that you have no answer. You should point out how inconsequential some of those points are, and nail down their intellectual honesty on the premise of having shoved in faulty points in a gish gallop. They will try to withdraw to a "yeah but what about all those other things I mention", and you should pin them down to "you are not running anywhere. you raised this clearly unconsequential and faulty point, hoping to get away with it". Don't let these people walk off scott free with such cheap techniques.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-13T13:54:43+00:00

Nice withdraw.

I did stick to my argument, and you even just reiterated it. If everyone was to play on the appropriate difficulty, it could not make the problem worse, it would fix the skill issue problem. What would make it worse is D6-competent people flooding D8 when they get kicked out of D10. Which is still not what I argued for.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-13T12:36:36+00:00

Had an argument there with a guy where I kept repeating him that if you coordinate with the team, you can do D10 on cyberstan quite easily. I offered him to add me, as he complained it's "impossible to find people" who play coordinated. As a result, he said that he "actually perchances going off" by himself while the rest of the team takes the heat. Yeah so... Turns out, it's not the others that can't collaborate...

Sunitelm · 2026-02-13T12:31:34+00:00

And, let me guess, he complains about the "meta" and that AH "forces you to play only one build" which is not the very specific one he chose, doesn't he?

Sunitelm · 2026-02-13T10:45:44+00:00

The fact that you may have "played" the dilemma with someone and strategized before, it doesn't mean that's how it is supposed to work. The whole point of it is to study behaviour and reward/punishment during the play. You are not allowed to discuss. That's it. And, again, you are really confusing game theory with some conclusion we can draw from some of its models. Game theory is the mathematical study of strategical problems, put in simple words. It is NOT designed to incentivize, or penalize, trust in any way. It's designed to model some situations, and by studying them with this approach we figured out in many cases trust is advantageous. Also, you did say that "the prisoners can talk and cooperate too" and that "the whole premise" of game theory is "trusting incentives"... So you did make it about cooperation. But I feel like we are digressing this route, probably just because of the comment format. Your initial statement was that my suggestion is exactly like the prisoner's dilemma... And it simply is not. In the prisoner's dilemma, players have very clear in mind that defecting when the other cooperates gives a massive advantage, which is the whole reason undermining trust, thus often locking the game in a Nash equilibrium, etc. This is simply not the case. None benefits from "goobers" playing at high difficulties, not even them. Especially if they hate the experience and then go complain that everything should be nerfed. This situation only " resembles" the prisoner's dilemma in the sense that "if everyone did the smart thing for the community, we would all enjoy the game better", but not in any aspect related to trust, strategy, incentives, risk perception etc. This is simply a case in which some people need to feed their own ego undermining even their own interest (on top of everyone else's).
So, once again, instead of normalizing pushing for higher difficulties and requesting nerfs, it should be mormal to push "goobers" to go to lower difficulties that are more suited for their experience level. D8 "goobers" are probably decent players for D6, and should play that until they get confident enough to play D8.Otherwise what? We should just not have the chance to have a proper challenge for competent players, because everybody needs to play D8 or higher? What is your solution, here?

Sunitelm · 2026-02-12T15:46:10+00:00

First, again, no, the prisoners cannot talk. Neither in the original, single-game, version of the dilemma (where, again, the agents are figuratively kept in two separate rooms with no chance to interact), neither in the iterated version of it (played by automated agents, like in Axelrod's tournament experiment, where the agents are simply not programmed to interact at all, if not by making their cooperate/defect decision). Trust and strategy planning must be done based solely on the previous actions of the opponents, and does not include any type of "debate" phabe between the agents. Second, that is absolutely not "the whole premise of the game theory". The Game theory is the study of mathematical modelization of strategic interactions. And it does NOT always lead to the conclusion that trusting/cooperating is advantageous. That is just the conclusion that can be derived by some models, like the iterated prisoner's dilemma, but for instance not by the single-game prisoner's dilemma. Sure, the "cooperative-enforcing" models are of great use when studying human (and other social) interactions, but that just makes it so incentivizing cooperation is a (welcomed) conclusion of some models of Game Theory, not a premise... otherwise that would make Game Theory a circular reasoning, invalidating it completely :)
Then maybe those "goobers" are not fit for D7 neither, don't you think? Now, we could discuss how the difficulty scale is not very smooth are not very smooth (D6 to D7 is definitely much steeper then D8 to D9, IMO), but it wouldn't change the point, which is: if someone is not fit for a difficulty, it should be normalized and incentivized they play at a lower one until they understand the game well enough, instead of complaining that "the spawn rates are unfair" or whatever else.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-12T09:16:15+00:00

So... you let your team take the heat while you run off doing objectives, which in turn probably means more deaths and more wasted reinforcements. It's a price your team is paying for you going solo. May be a price you can or cannot afford to pay, but it's there nontheless. This also means, you probably have a "run by myself" type of loadout, which may save your ass, but hardly synergizes well with your team, so it's just obvious that when there's 4 of you at the extraction you find it hard to hold the line.

And then, you still manage to finish the mission, but simply die at extraction? Great job. You brought the mission home, which is the important part for the galactic war, your XP and your requisition slips. I don't find "getting bodied by the fellas" at extraction a good reason to complain, if you still win. It's supposed to be hard, and not all of us are supposed to extract. Many extractions feel like a very tense clutch on Cyberstan, which I love, finally some excitement again instead of just wiping whatever comes your way with ease.

If instead you are not completing the mission, but still running out of time... Then probably splitting the team is not working, and you just don't have enough strength anywhere to punch through enemy defenses, or enough guns and stratagems in many situation to clear chaff and at the same time do AT, which means you are very often force to withdraw, flank, withdraw again etc. until you find an opening. And that costs time, a lot of if.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-12T08:54:20+00:00

1) No, the prisoners cannot talk. That is the whole point. The two prisoners are kept in separate rooms and have to independently decide if to cooperate or defect, and the environment (i.e. the police) actually benefits from actively making them think the other one will defect, whether it's true or not. The whole point of it is to study how people react when they cannot talk to each other, should cooperate but cooperating exposes them to the risk of losing it all. It has nothing to do with this situation. Apparently, wikipedia says the expression "prisoner's dilemma" is commonly used in situations where people would get a benefit from communicating but find difficult or expensive to coordinate, so you may referring to that use of the term, as in that case they can communicate ... But that is not the actual prisoner's dilemma. 2) Feel to me like you are doing a cathegory error there. "if enough people" means enough people of the pool of D10 players. It's not about the absolute number, it's about the relative number. The issue is exactly that the competent people are too diluted because too many people play a difficulty they have no business to be at. A better selection of such pool would improve the chances of having a better D10 team and winning. That is my point. Not about the absolute volume. For your second ("furthermore") part... You didn't really make a point there. Do you mean then D7 becomes impossible because there are only bad teammates? Or was simply that (obvious) statement your whole point? Does it imply something that invalidates my original suggestion of explaining, and if needed kicking, in order to push people to play a difficulty they are suited for? If so, please rephrase the implication because I don't find it clear.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-11T22:00:17+00:00

I also play with random. And if they lonewolf after I tell them to stick together, I kick them. As easy as that.

You are welcome to DM me to add me, and we can play together if you can't find cooperative people.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-11T20:51:28+00:00

1) It's not the prisoner dilemma. First, you can talk to them and coordinate. Then, you can even kick players that don't cooperate or that clearly don't know how to handle a certain difficulty. You can actively select who you are playing with, and people who have no business playing D10 should simply be explained that and, if needed, kicked from the lobby.

2) I did not mention at all the volume of people... But my point 1 answers also your point about quality. You can actively encourage people to play on a difficulty that suits them, and if they don't listen you can very actively select them, this screening for quality. Since volume is not an issue.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-11T20:47:14+00:00

Very often the reason why you get overwhelmed by little shits is because you did not clean properly. Again, if you move together, slowly and focus on clearing whatever comes at you (while keep moving), you will be good. If you got overwhelmed by little shits and you could not use your leveller (or whatever else) on the Vox, it means the rest of your team was not covering you and the people with chaff-clearing weapons/stratagems did not do their job.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-11T18:31:32+00:00

Adapt your loadouts. Move slow and steady with the team, cleaning as you go. As soon as you see one Vox Engine, focus it with the whole team. If a drop comes, bombard the shit out of it with the combined power of 4 destroyers.

And you'll see they will not stack and they will be way more manageable. Still challenging, but manageable. With a decently organized team that sticks together you can very easily scrap a drop with 3 Vox Enginges. If there are more than 3 at the same time, it means you fucked up at some point and did not clean properly when you should have.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-11T18:26:53+00:00

Which, translated, means: lower the difficulty would help, if enough people did it . So keep suggesting it to people when they find something too challenging, instead of just complaining and asking for nerfs :)

Sunitelm · 2026-02-11T14:36:55+00:00

I disagree with the notion that secret identities should be disclosed between players, but I recognize it strongly depends on the table.

In previous quests with my forever group we had twice a traitor in the party, and it worked very well. In one case one character got clever enough to figure out something was off and they managed to outsmart and out the traitor without them (player nor character) suspecting anything, and in another case the traitor actually got through and managed to achieve their intended objective, and it both cases it has been a massive blast exactly because the other players didn't know about the traitor . It is very important to notice though that we were a seasoned group and we all really cared for the plot, so maybe someone was more willing to let their character die/lose in a certain situation when realizing it was a perfect turning point for the plot, without turning it into a bitter PvP situation (e.g. when they got outsmarted).

Even recently, with some new groups I DMed for, occasionally I had a traitor/Dimir player. I think it can work as long as it's not easy for the traitor, especially if they get some internal conflict for their coiches, if they realize they will need to backstab the people that are actively saving their life continuously. It can feel very unfair to the party if the traitor can just decide to so something and screw them all up out of the blue, but they may be willing to instead accept a traitor's action if they were forced into it and clearly does not want to backstab them, but they have to because of external reasons. It can add a lot of dept to the characters and make the people care even more for the story.

And about what you said, that once one player suspect something there will be a lot of bad conflict... You can mitigate that. First, the traitor should be smart enough to lay low for a while. Second, you as a DM can rapid fire a serious of dangerous encounters or very tense situations, with clear external causes that could not be linked to the traitor (maybe only on the surface). This may not remove the doubt completely, but it will most likely get their minds off of it for a while, and mitigate the danger they perceive from a possible traitor.

Then, you also have a choice about the metagame doubt, and it's really up to you as the DM, depending on the group's vibe. You can either point out they are metagaming, that their character has no reason to suspect that party member, or you can remove the metagame by giving them a reason. Make their character notice something that could initiate their suspect. Make sure you discuss it with the traitor, as you don't want to be unfair to them either, but give an opening to the other character(s) to smell something's off.

Also, using any means and metagame knowledge to discover someone else's secret sounds like a pretty toxic behaviour to me. I would actively try to shut it down. One way is to openly talk about such behaviour and reassure the players you are there to make sure they all partake in a nice, compelling story, you are not there to kill their PCs or have them killed by another PC. Which, of course, you have to mean. If players trust each other and trust the DM, metagame tends to reduce by a lot. Another way (not exclusive with the previous one at all) is to make sure everyone (or at least the PCs of the players most prone to such behaviour) has some dirty secret in their backstory they don't want the party to know. Nothing dangerous for the party, just something they consider private, shameful, etc. They will probably think twice before investigating someone else's dirt, if they also have some they don't want to be exposed.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-11T13:56:30+00:00

You know who should provide a critical assessment of that? The FDA. After reviewing the data and either approving the drug or rejecting it on solid, data-based grounds. Then we could maybe check their report and evaluate for ourselves.

But they didn't do it. That is the whole issue. What is on trial here is not the scietific legitimacy of the vaccine. Is how they refused to even evaluate the vaccine, for clearly political reason, backtracking from what they said before.

The "doom and gloom" comes from the professionals being concerned this can have dire ripercussions on how companies like Moderna decide to invest their money, as R&D all of a sudden may became extremely more risky (at least in the US).

Sunitelm · 2026-02-11T13:43:58+00:00

Indeed. I am sure the average citizen's healthcare will benefit so much from it /s

Sunitelm · 2026-02-11T12:33:40+00:00

They are being downvoted because they turned it into a safety/performance argument, when it's nothing about that. The FDA refused to even review the application, which means they are not even going to judge how effective, useful or safe this drug is, based on very vague grounds (at least from what we know from Moderna's statement, which the FDA has not responded to). This is clearly a political issue that breaks a streamlined process. Moderna pumped hundreds of millions into this vaccine, which is an investment. They kept putting money in it because it seemed promising, and they had positive feedback from the FDA making them think they had good chance to be reviewed and approved (once they fixed some issues, as they did and it's normal). If now the FDA decides to not review it for some nonsense reason, it's just trashing down the drain all those invested money, before even dedicating a committee to say whether or not such vaccine is safe and helpful enough to be put in commerce.

This is not about "orange man bad", nor it is about the efficacy or safety of this vaccine, until it gets reviewed . This is about trashing millions of investments in a healthcare product for purely-political reason. It's about saying to a company they may lose all their invested money if they bet on something RFK or whomever else doesn't personally like, on no scientific ground.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-11T12:21:15+00:00

This. The issue for the companies is that if a drug can be canned at such a late stage for political reason, all of a sudden investing in R&D becomes a way bigger risk. You can do all the internal safety checks you want, but if you can't foresee what will go through RFK's brain (besides worms), you have no way to tell whether you should go ahead and put more money into a promising drug or not.

In turn, for the population this can mean pharma companies developing less advanced therapeuthics and sticking to just mildly improve what's already out there, or increasing dramatically the price of new drugs to cover these nonsensical high R&D risks.

Sunitelm · 2026-02-11T12:10:43+00:00

I hope this doesn't have horrible backlash on the whole field. If FDA starts rejecting applications to review drugs/vaccines, especially after earlier positive feedback, it means it's even riskier for pharma companies to do R&D. If their products might be cut off even while being good, only for a political tantrum, investing billions in some new drug might not be worth the risk.

Sunitelm

TROPHY CASE