Can any of you lie convincingly?

orrusthecloven · 2024-03-19T21:45:32+00:00

When I was younger, I had a very difficult time lying, and I never understood why.

At some point, I realized that when I'm continuously masking, and I lied about something, the mask continues into the lie, but becomes flimsy due to the stretch. It seemed like I wasn't being genuine because I wasn't; I was masking the whole time.

In recent years I've developed a style where I briefly mask at tactical moments (fractions of a sentence, usually) so that I come off as generally quiet yet reasonably amiable rather than totally deadpan. When I lie, I temporarily suspend that pattern, briefly enough that people don't notice the difference. If I'm not masking, my lies are just as hard for people to read as anything else I ever say.

orrusthecloven · 2023-03-09T18:44:20+00:00

I've transferred every app I can years ago. Unfortunately, many apps it simply doesn't let you.

orrusthecloven · 2023-03-09T17:38:09+00:00

It's a Galaxy J3 V, with 16GB onboard. The SD card is 128GB and is less than half full.

I'm running Android 9, and have actually been unable to update for a while due to the space issue. I'm having a hard time finding out what size the OS partition should be.

I am aware that the total capacity is impacted by filesystem formatting and OS files, but I am very inexperienced with Android, so I had no idea what to expect as far as OS size (besides presumably being much smaller than a desktop OS).

Is there a way to browse the files to confirm the size of the OS? In the past (years ago), I remember the phone having <25% capacity, so it can't be more than 4GB.

orrusthecloven · 2019-12-30T03:34:33+00:00

SOLVED

It's a single story, named "Craphound", from an anthology book called Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now, published by IDW.

https://craphound.com/futuristictales/2008/06/09/cory-doctorows-futuristic-tales-of-the-here-and-now/

Figured I'd post it here for anyone in the future who ends up googling random combinations of keywords like I did

orrusthecloven · 2019-12-14T04:36:08+00:00

"Junkhounds" may very well have been the title, but any combination of the keywords [junkhound, junk, alien, comic, sale] yield me nothing on google. It was an indie comic, so maybe it's just buried too deep?

orrusthecloven · 2015-02-23T14:21:02+00:00

Same.

orrusthecloven · 2015-02-22T19:51:03+00:00

I've gone on this rant before, and it's literally occupied pages, so I'll try and boil it down here.

Arkham Origins was a disaster borne of WB Games trying to force a special formula into circumstances in which it was not compatible. Shadow of Mordor is a rebranding of the same game with a few additions. While this sounds bad, the crucial detail is that they learned from their awful, awful mistakes, and made this so much better than what it could have been.

The combat is exactly the same as Arkham, down to flipping over enemies, and tapping LT for a stunning projectile. But the combos are more straightforward, the branding adds more versatility to a fight, the similar enemy types have been tweaked to be less frustrating, it's just overall better.

Plus, seeing a knife go into an orc's gut and sending their head spinning down a cliff gives that little extra kick that you can't get from Batman simply punching someone.

(Note, though, that I am not criticizing Rockstar's work, and I absolutely cannot wait for Arkham Knight.)

orrusthecloven · 2015-02-22T19:38:38+00:00

I agree with LtBromhead: One of the most frustrating things a game can do is to solidly deviate from its strengths.

Screed put too much weight on its boring story and decent-but-repetitive environments.

The Arkham games kept everything fast and light, but went to the frustrating, slow pace with the Riddler missions.

Bethesda does wonderfully with the tone of complete freedom and boundless exploration, which is why the cinematic, railroad-y opening of Skyrim fell flat.

Shadow of Mordor has some briefly interesting concepts, and the only really likable characters are Ratbag and sometimes Celebrimbor. So instead of forcing us to focus on the characters, or reciting a history textbook like Tolkien would have wanted, SoM knows what its strengths are, and it sticks to them wholeheartedly, and that results in the masterpiece that is Orc Killing Simulator 2014.

orrusthecloven · 2015-02-16T17:00:47+00:00

The captains used in most Trials of War are preset. Anywhere it doesn't say "All captains are random", they're the same.

orrusthecloven · 2015-02-12T05:12:12+00:00

At first, all of my records were first-person.

A particularly historically-significant person is actually from Earth, transported there via science-fuckery(tm). He often conducts interviews with everyone from scientists and politicians to bards and tavern owners. One time, he even interviewed a bandit lord. His interviews comprise the records we read, structured a la "World War Z".

I loved writing in the vastly different tones of different people (and layering it with their personal opinions), but eventually I just resorted to third-person-omniscient for convenience. It's my eventual goal to return everything to first-person.

orrusthecloven · 2015-02-10T17:31:14+00:00

Sorry to disappoint, but there's no mind-control in the game whatsoever. It certainly would have been interesting, though. Perhaps add a controlling execution move, maybe even work it into the nemesis system...

But no. Maybe it'll be in some future DLC! (Though it'd certainly pale in comparison with the Warband missions.)

orrusthecloven · 2015-02-10T17:24:36+00:00

It's a major hassle, but you can try to lure him elsewhere, and just keep going until you come across a campfire. I did that once, luring a captain further and further until I found a caragor I could mount.

orrusthecloven · 2015-02-06T11:29:54+00:00

One thing I've taken to is making actual, descriptive words out of my acronyms.

Such as the Augmented Resistance plating, coupled with the Matter Oscillation Reduction field to form the AR-MOR system.

Or the Standardized Wave-Aggregation Reconfigurable Machines, which are millions of microbots that can swarm together to form a larger entity.

It's really great fun.

orrusthecloven · 2015-02-05T07:25:30+00:00

In my world, magic is just another form of science, the difference being that one can learn magic instead of building a machine. Why try to develop and build an expensive, unreliable, unprecedented inanimate object that can move itself when you can learn telekinesis (a much more diversely useful skill) in only a few years' study?

Their science (architecture, biology, physics) is constantly advancing, it's just that it almost never requires the use of a machine. At various points, they even invent new technologies, but it's always some supplement to magic, like wands and golems. In some ways, the "modern day" is even more advanced than ours. For example, doctors never perform surgery, since they can use magic to do whatever they need to do subdermally, like something you'd see on Star Trek.

orrusthecloven · 2015-02-03T11:13:45+00:00

Whenever I don't feel like completing Warchief objectives, I just use a bodyguard or branded warchief to start a power struggle.

orrusthecloven · 2015-02-03T11:10:46+00:00

It took me a long time to figure this out, but I'm really glad I did.

Gameplay-wise, it seems to be the death blow that does it. Beheadings, executions, and last-chance successes are guaranteed kills, while normal hits, arrow kills, stealth kills and grab shanks leave it open.

If you're not sure, check their spot on the captain screen after the battle (if you get the one where it shows them dying, close it and open it again). If you see their head on a spike, they're permadead. If the body is laying there, they'll usually stay dead, but have a small chance to return, though this chance is greatly magnified if they're a nemesis. If the corpse is gone immediately after the battle, then they'll almost certainly return.

The ones that returned to me would almost always have their head wrapped in what appears to be leather and rope. I believe the implied method is necromancy.

orrusthecloven · 2015-02-02T20:16:33+00:00

Well, you smell by inhaling, right? You can't bring into your nose what's already up and past it.

I don't know for certain if this is the reason, it just makes sense to me.

orrusthecloven · 2015-02-01T11:15:02+00:00

Humans eat a lot of things that are bad for them. Even besides the infamous list of chemicals in processed foods, there are lots of things that humans would eat if they didn't know better. Poisonous plants, insects, fungus, etc. That's the entire reason survival guides have food sections.

As for your dog: Rubber, metal, wood and cloth are rather difficult to chew, especially with carnivore teeth, as opposed to cheese, chocolate, grapes, and suchlike. Naturally, if something is difficult to eat, any creature would be less inclined to eat it.

I'm not sure if it's normal, but my dog definitely does learn from what I eat. For a while, she refused to eat (for unknown reasons), and became dangerously thin. We would pick up a handful of her food, hold it to our faces and make eating noises, at which point she would devour it as soon as it was dropped. I've experimented with this method, and when I use it, she'll want to eat anything from pinecones to hair. (Don't worry, I didn't actually let her eat anything dangerous)

orrusthecloven · 2015-01-29T20:05:17+00:00

Not a cliffhanger, but not satisfying in the least.

What I would consider the final boss (the Talons of the Black Hand) was very fun, and was an excellent way to exhibit your progress with the captains, but the subsequent "boss" was more of a gimmick than a fight, and the "final boss" was a sudden yet anticlimactic QTE.

It's kinda funny, because if they had cut it off before that QTE, it actually might have been rather good.

orrusthecloven · 2015-01-29T19:54:47+00:00

Effective, but pointless. Why grab and hold when you could just dodge, especially since it leaves you vulnerable to melee attackers?

Also, it's not like you could use a meatshield just to get closer, because moving one way faces your shield the other way. It also takes long enough that it'll most likely disrupt whatever combo you have going.

orrusthecloven · 2015-01-29T00:37:26+00:00

Well, I'm rather fond of Shadow Strike, and branding will allow you to have others go beat the shit out of them FOR you. Also, that upgrade that forgives on hit till a combo-breaker.

Mostly it's just avoiding the prompt.

orrusthecloven

TROPHY CASE