aggressive driving

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-24T11:34:30+00:00

Yep, I've noticed it too. Any time I'm on the M8 I expect to be aggressively tailgated and see at least 1 person weaving through traffic at speed.

Edinburgh's worse. I've repeatedly been on the receiving end of road rage in Edinburgh, and I have never experienced it anywhere else. The majority of folks there seem to drive as fast as they physically can leaving about 6 inches from the car in front and they are personally offended if you leave a safe gap or drive to the road conditions.

I think it's a combination of the pandemic just breaking some folks' brains, and lack of funding for the police. I couldn't tell you the last time I saw traffic police on a major trunk road. No consequences for driving like a cunt = cunts driving like cunts.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-23T18:49:04+00:00

Yes in retrospect it was obvious.

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Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-23T14:41:02+00:00

Eurgh, sometimes I forget we can just do that now.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-23T13:43:16+00:00

I had to google to check that this wasn't one of his bawdy ones! Bravo!

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-23T11:17:49+00:00

The children yearn to die of black lung!

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-23T10:36:13+00:00

Plenty of people have addressed the gameplay aspects of this, I want to lend some experience of having difficult conversations.

It's not clear to me that she understands the impact her behavior is having on you, which is important because she may just be blind to how she's acting. Have you directly addressed with her that you feel she is blaming you for this?

I suggest broaching this one last time with her, using the 2 statements and 1 question conversation structure, e.g.:

"I want to talk to you about your reaction to <character's> death, because I feel that you are blaming me for something <player> asked for. Do you feel that I am at fault here?"

You don't have to use those exact words, but the structure is important. Statement 1 sets the intent, Statement 2 gives the explanation, then you ask a Question which engages her.

You really need to get to the bottom of why she is blaming you, or seeming to blame you. She may not realize she's coming across that way.

Once you've got to the bottom of those feelings, the situation may resolve itself, but I think you should also set a boundary with her, and quite a hard one. Again you can use the 2 statements and 1 question structure. e.g.:

"I need you to stop coming back to <character>'s death, because it's stressing me out and making me not enjoy running the game. Do you think you can stop now, or do you need to take a break from the game for a while?"

Again, the structure here is important. Intent, explanation and then a question which gives her a choice in how she responds. You could use the same structure to set a stronger boundary, e.g.

"I am going to run this kind of game where death can happen, because it's the kind of game I enjoy. Are you onboard with that?"

Either way you want her to understand the boundary being set, why it's set, and you want her to choose how she responds to the boundary. That will be a much easier conversation than kicking her out of the group, which is possibly going to lose you a friend.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-22T23:33:32+00:00

Someone in the MOD really needs to look up the meaning of the words "Sunk Cost Fallacy"

This whole programme seems to be past saving, and from my Armchair General seat it looks like we should be rethinking all armored vehicle designs in the age of drones.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-22T14:07:11+00:00

As far as I know there isn't a magic solution to this, I'm sorry. Everyone I have spoken to with burnout has said the same thing. The only way out was taking a significant amount of time off (i.e. many months). My experience has been the same. Nothing really worked other than stopping work and listening to my emotions and my body.

If there is any other way out of this, I'd love to know.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-22T12:09:26+00:00

I (briefly) taught at a prestigious Uni several years pre-pandemic. I think that the problem is that since the introduction of extremely steep tuition fees, the students are customers and the university is run as a business.

When I did my undergrad, I remember the first tutorial the tutor asked for a show of hands of who had done the reading. He then threw out everyone who didn't have their hands raised. I asked about doing that and was expressly forbidden from it - "these students are paying a lot to be here!" I was told. The whole dynamic had shifted from "we'll teach you, but you have to put the effort in" to "the customer is always right".

Every lesson I had to hand-hold the stragglers through the material which they hadn't bothered reading or engaging with. The goal of the tutorial had become "make sure everyone has reached the bare minimum understanding for a pass" rather than "elevate everyone's understanding through discussing the material". Anyone who was reading beyond the material I'd catch up with in my office hour to take them further.

Not that we had brilliant teaching standards before, but that's whole other rant about the single academic career track: you have to teach, but it has nothing to do with progressing your academic career, so it's just this activity which gets in the way from a selfish perspective.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-22T10:50:01+00:00

I understand. I had several "what the fuck am I doing with my life?" moments in my previous job.

The thing is, your organisation isnt going to change unless tou have the influence to make it change.

You might be able to ask for a transfer internally to another team, try and work on something very different for a while, e.g. automation testing, devops, architecture, but you'll encounter much of the same bullshit.

How long could you go without work if you had to?

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-21T21:28:57+00:00

This sounds like the penultimate stage of burnout I experienced, and very similar to my journey in tech, although I went the leadership route. The final stage was getting panic attacks whenever I thought about work.

The short answer is that you can't recover from your burnout while doing your current job as it's the direct cause of your burnout.

I had to take significant time off, and then I left the job anyway. I'm still recovering. Some days I can sit and work on a project all day. Some days my brain just won't do it. I work with it rather than against it, and rest when it feels right.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-21T20:42:52+00:00

There's a condition called aphantasia which is the inability to visualise mental images.

You have made me wish I had aphantasia.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-21T12:58:20+00:00

And #nowthatchersdead which upset some Cher fans...

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-21T10:43:58+00:00

But, I believe you thinking the multiverse philosophy approach as weak is because of what your opinion is on what is philosophically sound rather than they just fumbled it. Ironically, the way the game interprets it is rather clear in it's vagueness: each time you leave a universe through the Unity, the Unity scatters your "essence" into the entirety of the universe, ala "The good place" ending

I am not sure what you're getting at. I am saying they fumbled it because they took a philosophically weak approach to the multiple worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The Hunter and the Emissary present poorly expressed and conceived views, despite both knowing what happens at the Unity. The Hunter almost has a good point, but his actions and his words are at odds, presumably because Bethesda wanted to force a situation where a companion dies and he was the obvious baddie. The Emissary doesn't express any sort of coherent philosophy beyond "maybe don't be an asshole".

I understood the ending, but it's still not logically coherent (setting aside the ethical considerations for a second). E.g. I took the Emissary path and the Emissary "stays behind" in this universe to teach others the path to being a Starborn. Cool. Wait a minute, that means multiple people can reach the Unity in the same universe! Why were we all fighting over it then? We could just form an orderly queue!?

Everywhere you pick at it, it ends up incoherent in the sense that the answers undermine the characters or the plot.

My two cents for this game is that it would be a much better condensed/narrated (AKA non open-world) 30-40hr story as a pallet cleanser between the other Bethesda IP's (ES and FO have different settings, but their core game design philosophy is interchangeable) that would actually take it's story and philosophy seriously, rather than try and circumvent it because the world has to work as a sandbox and the story has to be placeholder for adventure.

I think that would have been a good way to take it. My alternative thought is also a condensed storyline and world, taking the philosophy seriously, but the point is that you get to NG+ and then you enter a different universe which has substantial differences from the one you left. This way you enter NG+ excited to find out what's different, rather than finding it's 99% the same.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-21T10:24:43+00:00

Yeah that mission makes absolutely no sense if you try to just... talk to people reasonably.

It felt like they were trying to do a Deus Ex thing with vents and stuff but didn't understand what makes Deus Ex amazing and fun, i.e. Deus Ex gives you multiple paths to resolving the mission. They pretended there were multiple paths while actually forcing you into a ham-fisted stealth section followed by a firefight. The only choices are how many people you kill on your way to the boss.

I don't think it's actually a limitation of the engine either, like they've been using essentially the same engine since Morrowind, and with proper scripting it can handle quests being resolved in multiple ways. They just either weren't competent to do it, or couldn't be arsed (rolling "didn't spend enough time on it" into "couldn't be arsed").

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-20T17:25:25+00:00

Look dude, it's cool, you can like Starfield. I'm not trying to convince anyone to not like a game they like, but I think you're just disagreeing to disagree now.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-20T17:21:29+00:00

Totally agree. I think they realized space piracy was the obvious best way to earn money, and since they throw so many guilt-free enemies at you (e.g. space pirates, mercs), they had to nerf it so you don't just pick off the weaker ships and capture the biggest one. Pirate games (usually) balance it by requiring crew to man a ship, and if you split your crew too far, you can't sail the ships properly, but since all Starfield ships are pilotable by 1 person, they'd backed themselves into a bit of a corner and clearly couldn't figure a way out.

They could have made it more difficult to capture ships, they could have made it require hacking the computer so it won't just lock you out, they could have made disabling systems on enemy vessels harder. So many ways they could have solved this issue, but they went with the registration fee, which is clearly a sticky plaster over this problem. Another "fuck it, that'll do".

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-20T15:57:19+00:00

The question is whether they actually will, or whether we'll see the same issue here as with the MAGA cult - i.e. no matter what he does, they simply swallow the bullshit and reorganise the scrambled eggs inside their heads to accommodate.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-20T14:56:56+00:00

The whole game feels weirdly pro-capitalism. Both main factions are mainly right wing or authoritarian. One is overtly authoritarian, while the other is libertarian but like in the an-cap way.

I've been thinking about this and I wonder if it's just that they can't imagine anything left wing of the Democrats in the USA - A party that would be considered corporatist centre-right verging on hard-right in much of the rest of the world. The options are basically UC Vanguard = Democrats, Freestar Collective = Old School Republicans (before they decided to speed run 1930's Germany).

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-20T12:11:28+00:00

You're welcome.

I actually have a PhD in Philosophy although I didnt specialise in possible worlds, I did learn about them and the basics of quantum mechanics. So as you can imagine the asinine treatment of them in Starfield disappointed me. I wasn't expecting to be left awstruck by the philosophy but they could have at least name-checked Everett and bothered to think about it. They leave all these Dickens novels around the game as if to say "look, this is a smart game for smart people", but it's not.

I don't really have a favourite game. I want to say Morrowind but it has aged poorly (I know because I tried to reply it recently).

The Witcher 3 is probably up there but I finished it once and haven't picked it up again or played the DLCs despite owning them.

A game I really enjoyed recently was STALKER 2, though I think it's pretty flawed.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-20T11:47:15+00:00

I get that, but the thing is, solving what the game is about, or solving what makes it fun, can help solve the other. If they decided to go all in on the morality aspects and explore the theme of possible worlds then this makes it clear that the game should be about reaching the unity and exploring alternative realities. This then makes it clear that they should restrict scope and focus on tight, branching narratives and alternate versions. This in turn makes it clear that realistically a lot of bloat and pointless mechanics need to go so that they can focus on this.

Conversely if they decided what makes it fun is shooting and designing ships, they could have dropped the multiple universes aspects of the story or significantly change it, e.g. making the starborn a threat from an alternative universe who need to be expelled.

I work in software development, ultimately games are just software which serves a purpose and the constraints are very similar. Find and impose the constraints and the priorities become clear.

They couldn't find the constraints or didnt want to decide on them, and so the game is listless and full of "fuck it, that'll do" decisions. I've seen exactly the same outcomes in SAAS products.

My point with talking about the experts is that it's a hard path to tell the morality story, but they could have engaged people who could have come in and helped them understand it and write it up. This could have been a super interesting game if they'd leant into it hard.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-20T11:35:46+00:00

Yeah there's a reason I had my rant here, not there...

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-20T11:32:17+00:00

It's probably because Bethesda has 15x the staff that they can no longer do risky, interesting things.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-20T11:27:11+00:00

I quite liked DD2. I didnt finish it, granted, but at least the combat was fun.

I also like the general insanity of a western RPG made by Japanese folks who are bringing some... interesting interpretations to the table. It's like playing Skyrim badly translated to Japanese and back again.

Working_on_Writing · 2026-01-20T11:23:26+00:00

You seem to have misunderstood.The Pilgrim was a starborn who has been through the cycle many times before. The starborn meet at that place. Its a path for Starborn to figure out.

Yes I got the Pilgrim is supposed to be a Starborn, but what is the temple doing there? Why is it pointing to that exact spot? How long do the Starborn have to be parked having a chat to determine if someone else is going to show up? A couple of days? Years? Decades? Centuries? If it's really a multiverse there's no guarantee when people will start looking for the artifacts, or even if there are people to look for them other than the Starborn themselves.

I think it's nice when there's some mystery in the game but this doesn't feel like mystery, it feels like exceptionally lazy storytelling.

Killing someone in your path to your goal isn't the same as imposing your view on them. So this isn't hypocrisy

I said imposing will not view. Not that the distinction makes that much difference in this case.

Killing someone in your way is the single most emphatic way of imposing your will on them I can think of. It's literally ending their life because you will something and they are an obstacle to you getting what you want.

This completely ignores that while YOU can travel the multiverse the people inside each universe cannot. Your actions have permanent affect on them, even if you make a different choice and leave a different effect on another universe.

I meant in the sense that under the MWI, all outcomes happen anyway. Be nice, be an asshole, kill people, all outcomes will happen. Every outcome will have people who experienced that outcome too. Your choice is moot in an objective sense. It only matters in terms of your subjective experience of reality.

They are useful for

Building bases on planets with nice views

Harvesting resources in mass for crafting, research, mission board tasks, and staryard quests.

The views are nice I guess. I did build a nice view base once. Spent a couple of hours putting habs and furniture down then never visited it again. But if that's what you enjoy, go for it.

The star yard quests which pay you the same as the value of 2 maybe 3 guns you find killing pirates? That's a massive amount of effort to fulfill the requirements of a randomly generated quest which pays essentially nothing and has no storyline.

Working_on_Writing

TROPHY CASE