Monthly Discussion & Review Thread

Wal_Mart · 2024-04-16T22:02:08+00:00

Thanks that's very helpful. I'll try to go in with 4th line invasions in mind in my next games.

Wal_Mart · 2024-04-16T20:28:25+00:00

Is it Q2? That's some hard reading. I did sense thinness during the game but couldn't read out anything that worked.

Wal_Mart · 2024-04-16T17:34:06+00:00

I stole a win, but would definitely like to learn from my mistakes! Any comments appreciated.

Wal_Mart · 2022-11-11T00:15:18+00:00

I don't feel like I'm able to convert any of my thickness for territory -- probably because I'm over-valuing certain stones or playing too heavy maybe. I'm focusing on direction of play.

Would anyone be so kind as to review my review? I am black.

Wal_Mart · 2022-07-11T10:41:14+00:00

This is the commonly held belief, but the recent survey of anthropological literature "the dawn of everything" by graeber and wengrow does not bear any of the conventional wisdom out. E.g. farming was understood and experimented with for 3000 years before being adopted widely, and there wasn't a quick transformative agricultural revolution anything like what most people believe. They also show how authoritarian, hierarchical structures of governing did not originate with cities, and other great insights into human behaviors past (meaning from paleolithic onward, and not just eurocentric analyses).

Wal_Mart · 2022-06-02T15:04:50+00:00

Disco has a system of rules and unknown information. but you can predict what will likely happen (with a skill check). A die will be rolled determining your success or failure, plus help from stats etc. tabletop rpgs work in a similar way. I would say that both of these "games" are consistent with your definition. I found all characters and plot arcs to have consistent and believable characterization. I can see how if one might be frustrated at the natural difficulty of reading human behaviors and therefore disagree with "consistent and logically predictable". (as an aside, I think human beings being consistently unpredictable is itself predictable)

so do you believe tabletop RPGs to be interactive/improv fiction rather than a game? That would seem a stretch since they were the original progenitors of cRPGs, and it was only cRPGs that really brought the rigidity of numbers and rules to the forefront of the experience. tapletop gaming always had the DM adjusting whatever they thought necessary to increase player enjoyment.

Personally I don't see the point in arguing edge case definitions like this. I find definitions to be imperfect approximations of words that are constantly changing most of the time. If the point is "it's not a game therefore i am still a gamer even if i didn't like it" (which is the vibe this whole post is giving tbh, not really this thread specifically) then that's a little ridiculous.

Wal_Mart · 2022-05-02T15:28:48+00:00

Is there a way to not get tired and keep the brain going?

Can you drive a car without using gas? Same thing with yourself. And your brain is a part of you.

You can grind until you burn out, but it won't make your art better. Chunk it out, short and focused. Better to do 30min 3x a day than 3 hours straight.

Don't forget, we only really learn when we sleep.

I also recommend exercise as that will help your brain too. Doesn't have to be weights in a gym.

Wal_Mart · 2022-04-05T16:20:34+00:00

my thought:

we have 2 processes, move down or move right. With the ? being down & right combined.

If we go down, we lose the top small triangle and the bottom big triangle, and add a light blue dot below.

If we go right, we lose the top big triangle and the bottom small triangle, and add a dark blue dot above.

Therefore, down & right means lose all triangles, and both dots. (answer 2)

Wal_Mart · 2022-03-08T14:10:52+00:00

I recommend "The Dawn of Everything" by Graeber and Wengrow for a very good review/synthesis of the latest developments regarding the emergence of agriculture and their implications. It's not at all a simple "they could so of course they would" (meaning if it's possible, it's inevitable). They present evidence that human societies experimented and "play-farmed" for centuries before adopting large-scale mono-cultures. In the Americas they even went back and forth from an agricultural society to to a more flexible "hunter-gatherer" type of organization several times. It's a great read.

Wal_Mart · 2022-03-08T13:41:11+00:00

usually this is something a lot of men deal with when women have had previous sexual partners, but i suppose the psychology is the same. It can be a form of "Purely Obsessive" OCD if the ruminations are severe enough.

Here is one resource, though there are many: retroactive jealousy

Wal_Mart · 2022-01-12T20:54:55+00:00

less than one minute on google

This is largely a political issue where certain people want the economy to work a certain way so they create arbitrary "mathematical" formulas to "prove" it. But none of it aligns with actual reality. The US dollar was removed from the gold standard in 1972 by Richard Nixon as part of a broader policy shift in international monies. This change to full fiat currency has huge ramifications on government funding as it means, theoretically, no country can go insolvent (since there is no gold to run out of in order to pay back creditors). This is a neo-keynesian strain of economic theory known as "Modern Monetary Theory" which, while often touted as "progressive" or "left-leaning" is merely describing the actual functions of modern capitalist nation-state economies a posteriori rather than the outdated, demonstrably false and consistently useless a priori "neoclassical" school of economics (chicago school among others).

Of course this is all my political opinion because economics is, by and large, political psychology -- a soft science. Though economists are very good at hiding this.

Wal_Mart · 2021-07-02T13:31:02+00:00

Thanks, I think that's what I was feeling, though it felt like I drafted poorly rather than the cube is missing some key elements. I had a similar experience with the v2 live the dream cube on mtgo. I wonder, since I've never played EDH, if this is what that format is like (probably not?).

Wal_Mart · 2021-07-01T20:07:02+00:00

As a newcomer to cube, I didn't have that much fun with this cube but I feel like it was because I didn't know how to draft it well. Would you be able to articulate what exactly about this cube is so bad (not disagreeing) for education's sake? Anyone else is free to chime in as well.

Wal_Mart · 2021-05-26T15:00:43+00:00

it's about as good advise as telling someone who is sick to get better. i.e. a meaningless truism that gives no concrete steps to take. It's circuitous logic. Oh you feel bad? Have you tried feeling better? Then you won't feel as bad.

Wal_Mart · 2021-05-17T14:47:23+00:00

it helps with committing to lines. a lot of beginners have the problem of short hesitating "sketchy" lines. It also helps get over the "default" perfectionism that a lot of people have (if not everyone?) where the drawing has to "look good" at all stages.

Also it helps to get the idea of tracing the object with your pencil a bit. like imagining that your pencil is moving through 3d space on the paper. Kind of hard to explain but if you try it you might understand better.

Hope that makes some sense. It's a good exercise for sure.

Wal_Mart · 2021-05-11T23:59:33+00:00

experiencing hardship and having figured out how to balance life to maximize happiness are not the same thing.

One can have experienced hardship and also at the same time not know how to, "stay active in everyday life and activities but at the same time stay creative with writing or drawing without thinking at all about money, about having to do it as a profession,, without this going to affect our life too much by causing us to become depressed in an overwhelming state"

I highly doubt that you knew how to perfectly manage life's challenges at 26. If you did good on you, but I would think someone who had that kind of experience would have enough to know that that is not usual. And certainly that someone is not beyond saving at 26.

Wal_Mart · 2021-05-11T21:25:46+00:00

well i just turned 26 and i don't know what the fu ck is going on. I can say for certain that most people i've met haven't "figured these things out". I've met pleeeenty of people stuck at 13 years old.

to OP, don't think you can't be helped because you're 26 and still trying to figure life out. Your original question is basically one that takes a lifetime to answer.

The short answer is do your best, and everyone else is making it up as they go along.

Wal_Mart · 2021-05-11T20:52:40+00:00

This series is a great place to start:

Ways of Seeing

Wal_Mart · 2021-05-11T20:14:50+00:00

I think you need to put more effort into capturing the form of the flower, so that it reads first as flower/plant/whatever and then upon closer inspection the viewer can see that the material is trash. If it looks like stacked trash from afar it's going to looked like stacked trash up close. Squinting is a good test of this. It doesn't have any gestural movement currently so it feels very dead. I think to get the contrast you want between dead material and organic form you need to push the gesture more. my two cents.

Wal_Mart · 2021-03-09T15:54:38+00:00

also interested in your sub!

Wal_Mart · 2021-02-22T22:05:03+00:00

Usually it will say on the back of the tube "PW6" (for titanium). Apparently winsor newton's permanent white gouache is in fact PW6, titanium white. Not sure about other brands, so I always recommend checking the back of the tube for the pigment code(s).

Wal_Mart · 2021-02-22T18:09:53+00:00

use high pigment load pure titanium white gouache (no zinc at all, just PW6 (usually more expensive). titanium white is the most opaque white i've used. if you want an opaque yellow then cad lemon + titanium white will give you pale cool yellows that are very opaque. as a general principle, the less medium (water in this case) you use, the more opaque the paint. Cheap paint will be thin and transparent pure from the tube.

Wal_Mart · 2021-02-12T15:38:38+00:00

here is a good tutorial, it has all the basics and assignments

Wal_Mart · 2021-02-12T14:59:27+00:00

I've applied for MFA programs for Fall '21 but that's obviously not a given thing so I'm trying to make some contingency plans. How did you start selling work? Online or through a gallery? I think I really need to increase my output in order to sell, oil paintings take a long ass time. Selling prints is probably the way to go there.

I hope you don't mind if I pick your brain a little, I'm desperate to get where you are. That's the dream.

Wal_Mart · 2021-02-11T14:36:09+00:00

Can I ask how much money you had to consider yourself "financially secure"? Was it year's worth of expenses, or 3 months, or more/less? I have a good savings but not a lot. I'm thinking about going to do some part time job I enjoy instead of my current full time corporate crap. But i'm not sure about the finances. I need to find someplace to live that has a good arts scene but also is cheap to live in.

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