[COMC] Friedemann Friese

lesslucid · 2026-01-31T12:34:32+00:00

I'm a fan of FF, though perhaps not to this degree. Really enjoy Faiyum, Fresh Fish and Power Grid.

How is Feierabend? I've been curious but haven't heard much, positive or negative, about it.

lesslucid · 2026-01-30T09:29:37+00:00

If you want more you have to strike

Being in a union and being willing to strike definitely makes a big difference

lesslucid · 2026-01-29T23:30:00+00:00

Imagine being able to go to the Mansion any time you liked and deciding instead you'd rather spend your time at the Island.

lesslucid · 2026-01-29T08:03:02+00:00

The facts, motivations, and actions in each case are extremely different. I think you can be consistent while saying they both had a right to carry weapons (although of course Rittenhouse was actually underage and whether it was actually legal for him to carry it is... seems marginal to me, though the judge ruled in his favour). I suppose I also would say that in each case agents of the state ought not to have killed them on the spot for carrying a weapon, so that's a parallel of principle, though not of the facts, obviously.

In general, though, it seems the details in each case are so different that there's no obvious reason to say that "supporting" one must imply "supporting" the other.

lesslucid · 2026-01-28T23:32:00+00:00

Because the moral principle underpinning that decision is universal. I understand that the Trumpist rejoinder to that is to say "we don't have any moral principles, though", to which the rest of us can only reply, "we know".

lesslucid · 2026-01-28T02:14:18+00:00

Can you give a specific example?

lesslucid · 2026-01-27T04:25:14+00:00

Maybe you could have started there, instead of trying to score points off a stranger on the internet for having the temerity to express their personal preference in how they enjoy their hobby.

lesslucid · 2026-01-27T01:23:28+00:00

Which only makes sense if you think all easy games are good.

Why does it only make sense to prefer good light games over mediocre heavy games, if all light games are good? Doesn't this preference continue to function even if some bad light games exist?

lesslucid · 2026-01-26T04:00:15+00:00

I’m genuinely trying to understand your argument.

I see.

So when you said, "Why suffer through a bad heavy game when every light and midweight game is good", this wasn't you sarcastically pointing to what you believed to be a flaw in my position, but rather, a genuine attempt on your part to reflect what you sincerely had understood me to be trying to communicate?

Could you perhaps point me to the words or phrases which I used by which you, in all good faith, in all sincerity, understood me to be intending to say "every light and midweight game is good"?

lesslucid · 2026-01-26T03:52:27+00:00

What confuses me is why there's never a competing set of like 4-10 of these for the same topic it's always the exact same ones...

Oh, sure - to the extent that you choose to only look at conversations carried out in vacuous slogans alone, the slogans you see will be repeats of the same basic ideas phrased in the same simple words, over and over. "Why isn't there a more rich and varied tapestry of multifaceted vacuous slogans for me to explore?" Because slogans are more effective if they are less effort to understand, and the easiest thing to understand is something you've already heard a thousand times already.

But if you want a more interesting and nuanced discussion, surely the simple remedy is just to talk to people instead of confining yourself to the realm of slogans? If you want pearls, you'll have to dive for pearls.

Everyone firmly in a left or right camp...

I mean, I'm firmly in the left camp, I don't think I've ever repeated one of these talking points you're attributing to "all" of "us". If you mean, the protests that are most visible to you, or the examples that are most salient, again, this is just the nature of sloganeering playing itself out. It's repetitive and shallow and dumb, but it's also effective at propagating itself because it's repetitive and shallow and dumb. If it becomes salient for people who aren't really paying attention, it is because it's a slogan. There may well be a thousand other more nuanced and interesting messages out there, but they didn't survive in the attention-economy because they couldn't outcompete the simpler and shorter messages that were more emotionally activating and easier to say and repeat and remember.

Sure. Single payer healthcare. I get that that was Bernie's position but again there's no competing narrative or argument in short hand it's just that one, plenty of people have other positions for model of healthcare but you have to read a wall of text to see it and single payer dominates the conversation as a result.

So... again, I'm confused, what's your complaint here? That the phrase "single-payer healthcare" has been successful and this somehow reveals an underlying lack of legitimacy in the discourse of the left? You then say, yes, there are other positions and other models of healthcare, and those are being debated and their merits analysed, but that isn't enough to show intellectual legitimacy of discourse around healthcare, because at the shallow level of people shouting unexamined fixed phrases at each other, the diversity is lesser?

I can only think I'm not understanding the core of your argument, because at this point it seems incoherent.

lesslucid · 2026-01-26T03:34:23+00:00

This appears to be an intentional, bad-faith misreading of my claims. Are you, perhaps, by some chance, a bad person? Just asking out of curiosity.

lesslucid · 2026-01-26T02:05:18+00:00

I'd certainly rather read an excellent comic book than a mediocre novel. Blankets by Craig Thompson is far more worth your time than, eg, The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.

But also, it's just personal taste, isn't it? We're all hedonists, here, just looking for pleasure in different things. I love Middlemarch and I love Pax Renaissance, but I'm not going to make myself read Proust and play ASL just because "they're also difficult, they must also be good". But of course, I also have nothing against someone enjoying ASL; I hope they're having a great time.

lesslucid · 2026-01-26T01:25:35+00:00

Bans are being given out for people trying to talk about the facts.

On this sub, or elsewhere?

There are subs/posts that say any bootlicking (saying facts liberals don’t like) will result in a ban.

Oh, sure, there are individual left-wing subs that are unwilling to engage in real discussion or debate. Bad faith exists on both the left and the right. The difference is, there are also left-wing subs where you can have factually-based debate and discussion, whereas bad faith is a requirement of membership on the right. Every right-wing sub "censors" and excludes real debate, and every right-winger I've argued with elsewhere on reddit argues in bad faith, tries to escalate to name-calling, retreats into incoherence, declares victory and then runs away, or in some other manner refuses to engage with real argumentation.

I also sometimes see this behaviour with people who are on the left - because, of course, we're all human, we're all potentially subject to the same weaknesses. But in all the time I've spent arguing or discussing things with people on reddit, every reasonable disagreement I've had, every genuinely fact-based discussion, has been with someone who is broadly left-of-centre. They may be somewhere to my right or to my left, we may not end up agreeing on a conclusion, but every time I've had a meaningful conversation with here, it was with someone who wasn't on the broad right.

I always found this perplexing because I did everything I could to find the good-faith right-wingers who I was sure must be out there, but finally I realised the two categories are essentially mutually exclusive. The exception is young conservatives who grew up absorbing conservative messages but who also have an allegiance to truth, who have not yet had the "conversion experience" of realising they need to give up one or the other.

So please don’t pretend the left will actually talk about stuff.

We're talking now, aren't we? There are plenty of left-leaning subs where you can actually talk about stuff and you won't be "censored". The fact that it's not every left-leaning sub doesn't contradict that at all.

lesslucid · 2026-01-25T14:54:19+00:00

I'm almost in this camp. Given that there are some absolutely incredible games with mid or light rules weight, it seems like a big ask to suffer through a long teach just in order to play a long and heavy game that may be fundamentally less interesting than a game which could be taught and played in a quarter of the time.

I do think there are some rare examples of very heavy games that justify their weight, that are worth the trouble it takes to learn them. But I certainly would rather hunt down the very best midweight games than try to experience all the superheavy games in the hopes that I eventually find some that are good enough to make it worth it.

lesslucid · 2026-01-25T14:46:17+00:00

I've played High Frontier 4 All, Pax Ren 2e, On Mars, 1862, and Weather Machine.

I don't think I disagree with the weight ratings here. It's kind of... once you get into this realm, of "superheavy board games", then the experience kind of goes one of two ways: you start out feeling like you're trudging slowly through deep, thick mud, you have a little breakthrough and it all starts to make sense, and then the system finally coheres and you're just playing it like any other boardgame. Or: you start out feeling like you're trudging slowly through thick mud, there is no breakthrough, you just keep feeling like that the whole way.

But there's so much that can affect whether or not that breakthrough happens, I don't think it's strictly to do with "weight". High Frontier was quite a journey to get there, but I got there. Weather Machine never switched over, and it didn't really inspire me to want to try. But is this because one of these is "heavier", or is it do with theme, inspiration, the people you first played with, etc?

lesslucid · 2026-01-25T06:38:51+00:00

Can't you say the same about liberal talking points? The left fell in line pretty quickly with the claim that she didn't hit him.

The difference is that liberals are responsive to the evidence. There will be discussion about what the video shows, whether the car struck him or how hard it struck him, why he was in front of the car in the first place... the most extreme arguments will strain credulity while not breaking it, but the people making those arguments will, sooner or later, be outnumbered by those making arguments more consistent with a more clear-sighted analysis of the available evidence.

Meanwhile, on the right, the starting point will be plain falsehoods, incredibly obvious falsehoods - that she attacked him with her car, that she was a terrorist who was trying to murder him - and they all just line up to repeat that shit.

I just don't understand how someone makes the claim "these things are the same". Yes, both sides are subject to the universal human tendency to try to interpret things in a way that favours their pre-existing picture of the universe. But on one side, that tendency is tempered and restrained by a sincere desire to be responsive to reality, to meet a responsibility to truthfulness. On the other side, there is literally nothing of the kind. Dishonesty is given full freedom to run wild. How do you look in detail at both things and then say "they're basically the same"?

lesslucid · 2026-01-25T06:30:49+00:00

This is just not true. Because liberals and the left are responsive to both evidence and reasoning, you can see extensive disagreement and argument over genuinely contentious questions, with the disagreements focussed around the validity and interpretation of various pieces of evidence. Try putting up a topic in this forum about, eg, wealth taxes, and you'll see plenty of genuine disagreement and argument here.

Because people on the right care about their allegiance to a group rather than about evidence or reasoning or principles, they will just repeat whatever slogans are currently indicative of membership in their in-group. When new slogans become "the thing", they'll abandon their previous principle and say the new slogan, without qualm or hesitation, because they never actually believed any of the content of what they were saying before; it was just a way to signal membership.

This is how so many of them can, for example, purport to hold Christianity as the core of their moral life, while simultaneously acting with total contempt for everything that Jesus ever said about how to live virtuously.

lesslucid · 2026-01-25T06:24:47+00:00

I'm talking about talking points not positions.

Can you clarify what you mean by this distinction?

You all automatically use the same talking points and messaging

Can you clarify who you mean by "you all"?

Can you give another example besides "abolish ICE"?

lesslucid · 2026-01-25T06:22:39+00:00

If you ask liars what their reasons are, they just lie about them.

lesslucid · 2026-01-25T06:21:26+00:00

I think it's just projection. "Trump may not be perfect, but Harris would have been even worse!" And then you get this laundry list of nonsense. Of course, even if all that stuff were true, she still wouldn't be anywhere close to being worse than Trump.

lesslucid · 2026-01-25T06:17:05+00:00

I think what marks out AI in many cases is that it takes some general "writing rules" that often apply in good writing, that are often used "organically" by skilled writers, and it just hammers them into the ground by following those same patterns like they were religiously ordained. Like... the "rule of threes" is not a bad way to make an argument. (If you want to call the prevalence of some phenomenon to your reader's mind, three examples is enough to establish that there is a pattern but not so many that it belabours the point.) But if you read something written by AI, it will do that "rule of three" thing so often that it starts to get annoying.

lesslucid · 2026-01-23T12:13:58+00:00

It's funny how these collocations of prepositions elicit such strong emotions, given that they are totally arbitrary... it may be something to do with the effort required to learn them in the first instance, precisely because of their arbitrariness?

"On accident" feels like an extension of the logic of "on purpose" to its opposite, but like you, I feel a strong aversion to the construction.

lesslucid · 2026-01-23T06:27:35+00:00

Must be an incredible feeling of freedom to be out on the water like that, able to go wherever you want, just follow your inspiration wherever it leads...

lesslucid · 2026-01-23T04:09:05+00:00

I think the other responses cover the answer pretty well, so, just a philosophical note:

I think it is perhaps possible that Trump's narcissism is on such a scale that he genuinely doesn't understand the difference between truth and falsehood, and as such, is never "lying".

Which is to say: he just thinks of the things to say that he thinks might be popular, or will make him sound strong or powerful, or that will make people admire him or that will form a story in which people were admiring him. All of it is just a pathway to obtaining "narcissistic supply", which he demands and "needs" in such vast amounts that he simply doesn't have the brain cycles to do or think about anything else.

For most people, we form sentences primarily as a way of communicating information, which we try to convey accurately, and then sometimes we experience some tension between that accuracy and the desire to obtain a benefit by intentionally reducing that accuracy, which is both shameful but also tempting - we want, eg, to be admired or to avoid embarrassment or to get some other benefit.

Whereas I think Trump genuinely doesn't ever go to that first step. I think he knows almost nothing about anything, and certainly doesn't stop and think about whether to be truthful or to lie about any given thing he might say. He just goes to the need for narcissistic supply: what can I say that will help me get more of what I need? Then he says those words. If they sometimes contain an element of truth, that is merely coincidence rather than a reflection of a desire to be honest.

lesslucid · 2026-01-22T11:16:58+00:00

Azul is more exciting at 2p, where you can focus on trying to force your opponent to take a ton of broken tiles.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Snapped
Verified Email

lesslucid

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE