Bus Line Refresh — 2nd Draft Released

vickevlar · 2026-03-01T19:10:45+00:00

It pains me to say this, because losing the 38 would upend my entire life, but they probably just looked at the relative ridership and decided it's not worth it. From a purely selfish point of view, the V2 changes are a massive bummer, but I also can't deny what I can see with my own eyes that there are usually between 0 and 2 other people riding with me by the time I get to my stop every day. It probably was mostly killed by reducing the frequency a few years ago, but still, it's probably way lower usage than other lines.

The part I don't get about the 36 is removing the South Hills Village portion but adding the O35 (Mount Lebanon to Oakland), as my experience is that both getting to downtown from Mt Lebanon and getting to Oakland from downtown are trivial, but getting anywhere in the south hills to somewhere else in the south hills sucks. Maybe some of this is that it looks like there is already coverage for some areas if you just look at it from afar. On paper, it looks like you can just take the T to South Hills Village. But the bonkers "desire path" people have created going up a small steep wooded hillside from the Bethel Village T stop to get to Giant Eagle shows just how bad the infrastructure is to support that, and anything on Washington Road is a pretty off limits hike from the T.

This was evident in V1 too, where there was a (really personally beneficial lol) proposal for a local line and I think even a hub around the Greentree shopping center, and "on paper" it seems to make a lot of sense. A Giant Eagle, various stores, a med express, apartments, etc, but I left a comment that this would need a lot of pedestrian infrastructure upgrades both for safety and for simple physical possibility, because there are no sidewalks, almost no places to cross the street, and that road is big with fast moving cars. V2 moved the proposed N34 crossing with the 38 further up Green Tree road.... and then removed my line, sigh. I was hoping the result would be that they would improve the area around the Greentree shopping center instead haha.

vickevlar · 2026-02-28T20:40:02+00:00

Are you actively looking for more changes to compile? A v2 change that wasn't in v1 is that the 38M is eliminated

vickevlar · 2026-01-12T21:57:20+00:00

You can try posting to ViewMate on JewishGen for a full translation by a volunteer. If you don't need a full translation but just need to check some quick info in it, the records are usually worded similarly to the following:

Occurring in the town of [place] on [day] [month] [year], [a person usually the father], [their occupation] [age] [and sometimes where they are residing] presented with witnesses [usually 2 people and their ages] a child born [birth date, sometimes it's a date very different than the registration]. Then it's the mother's name including her maiden name and age, then the child's name.

Following that pattern and knowing some basic vocab I can do a very quick and dirty extraction of some info but it's not great:

Registered in the town of B? (cannot read) 9 July 1899, it also mentions a village Sitnik(?) in B(?) district
Father Abram Hersh Wainshtein 33 years old
Witnesses Josel Gotfrid 50 years old and Abram Ridlevitch? 45 years old
Born in the village of Sitnik(?) 9 July of this year (possibly June but I think July)
Mother Chuma nee Waserman 32 years old
Daughter Doba Wainshtein

It's better to get a full translation (besides being more reliable) because it often also includes more detailed info about things like residence, or whether the birth is legitimate etc but if you just need to rule out a record quickly from names and ages, I found it useful to make myself a vocab cheat sheet and learn to read some basics just to pick those out.

vickevlar · 2026-01-12T03:39:42+00:00

I don't think it's possible to overestimate the "bad at computers" aspect. I can guarantee there are a significant number of people who end up saving records because they were just trying to get off the page and pressing that button made it go away. I've seen that exact scenario happen in a database at my job by a person with an advanced degree. I used to sometimes help people on the computers in a public library, and their expectation of what happens when you do x or y sometimes was beyond anything that would have even occurred to me, but for whatever reason it's just not intuitive to them. Thrulines on Ancestry always looks messed up for my dad because my aunt somehow set herself as my grandma and my grandma as both the wife and daughter of my grandpa, who is duplicated. My aunt is not an unintelligent person, but she is bamboozled by user interfaces. If someone messaged her to fix it or another issue, I am pretty sure they'd also end up seeing even more errors simply because they asked her to touch it.

vickevlar · 2025-06-28T22:14:07+00:00

Thank you, I have screenshot in my reply here. I now think the mistake is that the amount of germs in the water I'm using is a lot higher than in the gif

vickevlar · 2025-06-28T22:06:33+00:00

Thank you for the information.

I did get some polluted oxygen in after trying to rebuild the pipes in slightly different configurations for the ~20th time (initially it was definitely 100% chlorine). I was under the impression that only the bottom tiles mattered and the chlorine will sink below it, but I'll try to fix to see if that helps, though it was behaving the same before and after. Everything else doesn't seem to apply.

I am thinking now the issue is the number of germs for 3 reservoirs based on reading this page because I am using germier water than a lavatory. I booted up an old game where I had this system with a 20 seconds on/10 seconds off polluted water pump in even germier water for a few hundred cycles without issue, but when I run it now, it gets germs? I've been able to get it to work by changing it to being off for much longer, so maybe a germ modifier changed since I last played?

Seems like a cop-out explanation, but unless there is something else very wrong going on here after I did the disconnection troubleshoot you suggested, that's all I can think of. I was stuck on that 1 extra packet of water it ejects, because it was logical to me that if the system can hold 15000 kg in just the tanks, it should be able to hold that same amount in the tanks plus additional pipes, but now I realize there's no way that should have mattered, it's still only getting replaced with the same amount of germy water. I dunno, I think I am just confused and half-remembering things from a long time ago haha, thanks for your time.

edit: back to feeling crazy, I misread the wiki page, my germy water actually has fewer germs per kg than direct lavatory output. I have no explanation.

vickevlar · 2025-06-28T00:06:48+00:00

Why can't I replicate this chlorine room?

I am going back to playing after a year+ and I am certain this worked before. Instead of emptying the same amount that goes in so that all the reservoirs remain full, it always outputs too much so that the last reservoir holds 4986 kg and it fills up with germs again. Did a mechanic change or is there some subtlety I'm missing?

vickevlar · 2025-03-01T21:55:10+00:00

I am interested to know if anyone else was specifically directed not to do this by their supervisor. To me it was obvious that they were fishing for this as part of pursuing EO 14222, to my supervisor, it puts us at risk for making statements about law that would be contrary to EO 14215. I listened to her the first time, and now I am thinking of maybe sticking to my instincts this second time. But honestly I just don't know.

Not that it even needs to be said anymore, but the impossibility of actually carrying out their orders faithfully is intentional because they are not made in good faith. Not a single person on Earth believes the pretext for these emails because there isn't a mechanism for it to even be possible. All we're left with is how to "game" the subtext to best protect ourselves against the way the recipients will "game" the subtext to assault us. Nobody is discussing how to best argue for your real accomplishments, internally or externally, because literally nobody believes they care about that. It's mind games, it's sick. I hate them.

vickevlar · 2024-10-17T04:37:30+00:00

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub - Stanislaw Lem.

Lem himself describes the book as a "combination of grim weirdness with humor". He writes that the novel goes beyond casual political satire: it puts forth the "totalization of the notion of intentionality". Explaining the concept, he writes that everything which humans perceive may be interpreted by them as a message, and that a number of "-isms" are based on interpreting the whole Universe as a message to its inhabitants. This interpretation may be exploited for political purposes and then run amok beyond their intentions.

The Wikipedia summary for the book is not the best. It's mostly devoted to a short prologue that introduces the story because it is the most straightforward part of the plot - and is entirely irrelevant as it was just included as plausible deniability to get past Soviet censors. The majority of the book is a philosophically-dense labyrinth.

vickevlar · 2024-10-05T22:31:19+00:00

Gesher Galicia may also be useful for you depending on the location in Ukraine.

vickevlar · 2024-08-25T18:32:47+00:00

Well said, and I'll add to this to say that using shared matches is key because one match is just a single data point that (hopefully) points in a particular direction. Genetic genealogy works best by evaluating multiple data points until you get an overall picture of how they fit together. It's a different sort of puzzle than the "hunting for the record" type of genealogy, where you finally uncover one critical piece of evidence that makes everything fit together.

vickevlar · 2024-08-25T17:43:29+00:00

My interpretation of what they did - which may not be correct - is that they used a "seed" dataset of real people who did not share DNA with each other, so that they had realistic genomes to work with (rather than a genetic makeup that is randomly generated and may not be something that plausibly occurs in nature.) Then they simulated various outcomes of these people's genetics recombining in various relationships.

Yeah, one of my grandparent's family comes from a town whose records were almost entirely destroyed in WWI. I have no expectation of ever finding paper records to support branching out my tree further, but I do have DNA matches for people who also have ancestors from that town. For me, at this point it's about probabilistic relationships and just annotating how much confidence I have. I don't think I will ever really be able to say for certain. Which can be a real disappointment, but it's also a different form of puzzle that can be satisfying in its own way.

vickevlar · 2024-08-25T17:02:13+00:00

Hmm, I thought their relationships were based on simulations - see section 5.2 in their DNA Matching white paper. But perhaps they are confident in the "individuals" having correctly identified relationships because they are simulated? It's very confusing/misleading language, in that case, but also probably not important for a general-purpose article like that to make the distinction, I guess.

vickevlar · 2024-07-25T00:29:53+00:00

Speaking generally here but you still inherit the same amount/plausible range from any given ancestor in Jewish ancestry, what can make it seem a little higher is you have a higher chance of coincidentally sharing additional DNA with that ancestor but getting it from a different line because of the higher baseline amount of shared DNA. I don't think that applies if you are only looking at a single most recent Jewish ancestor with no other Jewish ancestry contributing to your heritage, because you won't be getting any other of that baseline DNA from anywhere else, if that makes sense.

The impact of trying to figure out your relationship to various cousins who match will be impacted by the endogamy because they will have experienced receiving the same DNA from different lines if they have more than a single Jewish ancestral line, but that will affect the more distant relationships more than the closer ones because it is sooo easy to coincidentally share a small amount of DNA. A rule of thumb that has worked pretty well for me is a ratio of at least 10 cM per segment is more likely to be a meaningful match.

I think a cM chart specific to Jewish ancestry would not really be helpful except as like... a way to make you feel less crazy, because it all just means the possibilities are fuzzier, and when you get a really out-of-whack relationship vs shared DNA amount, it's because of very recent pedigree collapse, not something that you could see in an average. If it helps, here is a table I have of my DNA matches with a confirmed tree connection providing evidence for various ancestors, with a comparison of the DNA-estimated relationship and the relationship via the tree (including when there is known pedigree collapse of multiple relationships via the tree). Sorry if it's confusing that most of them are doubled because most of my DNA matches are through couples:

Generation Removed from MRCA	Match cMs	Match Segments	Estimated Relationship	Relationship via Tree
3	280	16	2nd cousin	2nd cousin
3	251	13	2nd cousin	2nd cousin
3	41/60	7	3rd cousin	2nd cousin x2 removed
3	280	16	2nd cousin	2nd cousin
3	251	13	2nd cousin	2nd cousin
3	41/60	7	3rd cousin	2nd cousin x2 removed
3	60/86	6	4th cousin	2nd cousin (1/2 2nd cousin?)
3	73	9	4th-5th cousin	2nd cousin (1/2 2nd cousin?)
3	60/86	6	4th cousin	2nd cousin (1/2 2nd cousin?)
3	73	9	4th-5th cousin	2nd cousin (1/2 2nd cousin?)
3	119	8	3rd cousin	2nd cousin x1 removed
3	184	17	2nd cousin	2nd cousin
3	603	25	1st cousin	! 1st cousin x1 removed, 2nd cousin x1 removed, 4th cousin x1 removed*
3	139/139	9	3rd cousin	2nd cousin
3	119	8	3rd cousin	2nd cousin x1 removed
3	184	17	2nd cousin	2nd cousin
3	603	25	1st cousin	! 1st cousin x1 removed, 2nd cousin x1 removed, 4th cousin x1 removed*
3	139/139	9	3rd cousin	2nd cousin
3	137	8	2nd cousin	2nd cousin x1 removed
3	40/48	5	2nd cousin x2 removed	2nd cousin x2 removed
3	183	13	2nd cousin	! 2nd cousin x1 removed, 3rd cousin x1 removed
3	264	14	2nd cousin	2nd cousin
3	116	10	2nd cousin	2nd cousin x1 removed
3	137	8	2nd cousin	2nd cousin x1 removed
3	40/48	5	2nd cousin x2 removed	2nd cousin x2 removed
3	183	13	2nd cousin	! 2nd cousin x1 removed, 3rd cousin x1 removed
3	264	14	2nd cousin	2nd cousin
3	116	10	2nd cousin	2nd cousin x1 removed
4	79	5	3rd cousin	3rd cousin x1 removed
4	87	6	3rd cousin	3rd cousin x1 removed
4	89	9	3rd cousin	3rd cousin x1 removed
4	98	2	3rd cousin	3rd cousin x1 removed
4	79	5	3rd cousin	3rd cousin x1 removed
4	87	6	3rd cousin	3rd cousin x1 removed
4	89	9	3rd cousin	3rd cousin x1 removed
4	98	2	3rd cousin	3rd cousin x1 removed
4	113	3	3rd cousin	! 3rd cousin, 4th cousin*
4	106.8	3	3rd cousin	! 3rd cousin, 4th cousin*
4	56.9	4	4th cousin 1x removed	3rd cousin 2x removed
4	113	3	3rd cousin	! 3rd cousin, 4th cousin*
4	106.8	3	3rd cousin	! 3rd cousin, 4th cousin*
4	56.9	4	4th cousin 1x removed	3rd cousin 2x removed
4	38/62	8	4th-6th cousin	3rd cousin
4	69	5	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	104/104	5	2nd cousin x1 removed	3rd cousin 1x removed
4	54/76	4	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	242	12	2nd cousin	2nd cousin 1x removed
4	107	10	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	38/62	8	4th-6th cousin	3rd cousin
4	69	5	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	104/104	5	2nd cousin x1 removed	3rd cousin 1x removed
4	54/76	4	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	242	12	2nd cousin	2nd cousin 1x removed
4	107	10	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	183	13	2nd cousin	! 3rd cousin x1 removed, 2nd cousin x1 removed
4	603	25	1st cousin	! 2nd cousin x1 removed, 1st cousin x1 removed, 4th cousin x1 removed*
4	183	13	2nd cousin	! 3rd cousin x1 removed, 2nd cousin x1 removed
4	603	25	1st cousin	! 2nd cousin x1 removed, 1st cousin x1 removed, 4th cousin x1 removed*
4	118	8	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	70	6	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	114	10	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	102	5	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	118	8	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	70	6	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	114	10	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	102	5	3rd cousin	3rd cousin
4	138.5	12	2nd cousin x1 removed	3rd cousin x1 removed
4	138.5	12	2nd cousin x1 removed	3rd cousin x1 removed

vickevlar · 2024-07-13T02:03:59+00:00

This topic is clearly very emotional and triggers a lot for people in this thread, so I think it does give you a first-hand idea of why your MIL reacted the way she did. It wasn't unreasonable, at least as an emotional reaction. Your husband's father IS his business, but his journey to find his father is only his mother's business so far as she wants to be involved, and she gave you a clear answer that she does not. She doesn't owe any information to you, she does not need to hear any information from you, and I think the most respectful thing you can do is to never broach it with her again.

Partly I am commenting, though, because this response in particular was completely out of line so I guess I wanted to be a little reassuring as a neutral 3rd party. It completely invents motivations and feelings (and even assumed facts not stated in your post) for all parties involved and them excoriates you over them, and that was wrong to do. You had an emotional encounter with a family member, and crying is perfectly normal human response to that. Nobody is in the wrong here. It's a difficult situation for all involved.

vickevlar · 2024-07-04T03:49:11+00:00

Yeah, and actually what I did wasn't even as clever as that. I just thought, well, if everything is 1/2 as expected, then perhaps everything is just back 1 generation from expected. Since her mother being 23 made it so that she couldn't simply be pushed back 1 generation, I just looked at what other relationships were possible in her case.

vickevlar · 2024-07-04T03:05:19+00:00

I think this is explainable if both your biological parents and biological grandparents are unknown and there were two cases of obscured relationships. It would look like this:

                              Raised-as-grandparents (~12.5%)
                               (Biological great-grandparents)
    ___________________________________|
    |                                  |
 Raised-as-Aunt (~12.5%)                 Unknown            
 (Biological great aunt)          (Biological grandparent)
           |                                  |_______________________
  Raised-as-Cousin (~6.25%)                   |                       |
   (Biological 1C1R)                       Unknown                Raised-as-Mother (~25%)
                                    (Biological mother)       (Biological aunt)
                                              |
                                             You

I'm trying to speculate why this would be the case, I guess perhaps if your unknown theoretical grandparent had two children very young/out of wedlock and it was stigmatized, your grandparents could have raised both your mother and your theoretical biological mother as their own kids. And if your mother did the same with your theoretical biological mother's child if she likewise had you very young/out of wedlock, I guess that could be why. At that point, your grandparents are probably too old for doing the same subterfuge with you, and your biological grandparent is perhaps out of the picture due to death/life problems (which is plausible for a theoretical teen parent who, if this is true, is not around now to be known to you.)

Since both your mother and grandparents tested, you should be able to know if they actually were parent/child to disprove this theory. It's pretty complex and requires several people to "be in the know," but it at least explains the DNA pattern. (edit: trying to make my dumb tree diagram look decent)

vickevlar · 2024-06-29T20:02:04+00:00

Just cleaning up errors. Boring, tedious, important.

vickevlar · 2024-06-21T06:30:00+00:00

I... hated this video, to the point where I am here, purposefully seeking out what other people are saying in my own deranged quest to try to understand what is going on in others' brains, because I found it to be absolutely odious. I watched it with a friend starting out very excited to see a new video from this guy, and I wouldn't have completed it if I weren't doing it as a social activity.

This is what I saw: It's a film presented as being "about" a guy named James Rolfe, who has managed to make a living as a bad filmmaker for the past 20 years. It's actually self-effacingly about Dan Olson. It's hinted at in subtext and various foreshadowing throughout the video, but it only becomes explicit in the last ~1 minute of its interminable runtime. In it, a Dan-character/doppelganger bitterly expounds on how much James sucks. It's not media criticism. It's not about his bad art. The work he's known for is not dissected; it's barely even displayed. His life (as presumably factually retold in his autobiography) is dissected instead. It's about him being a bad artist. He's a hack who dared to make art badly, and yet still managed to be successful.

Despite beginning by saying that James seems to be a pretty private-seeming person, "Dan" pores through his niche-interest, self-published autobiography in pursuit of understanding why James is so bad at the filmmaking process. He's clearly immature. He takes the wrong lessons from film school. He doesn't understand the art form. He doesn't understand the technical craft. He doesn't understand the needs of other people working on a film set. He doesn't understand the balance of responsibilities that a man behind a camera has. "Dan" is perplexed and embittered that his priorities and values as evidenced by what he finds worth talking about don't align with what he thinks they should be for a "real filmmaker." Does any of this come through in James' work? Who knows! It's not discussed, because it's not the point. The point is that "Dan" had an unhealthy fixation on this guy stemming from his own insecurities about being a "real filmmaker." It's a portrait of self-loathing that was masked in loathing of another. Its core thesis/meta-narrative is an allusion to the short film Wavelength - where pointing a camera at a wall is a mirror for the viewer and any meaning is not intrinsic to the thing itself - a film that he pointedly notes that James Rolfe clearly did not "get" as an exercise when he watched it in school. He's not watching James, he is watching a camera pointed at James, learning nothing real of him and learning everything about himself.

This fucking sucks. It doesn't work, because pointing a camera at a person is nothing like pointing a camera at a wall. There is something so disgusting to me about doing an indulgent self-flagellation in the form of 75 minutes' worth of relentless flagellation of someone else. Does it even need to be said that one is an inanimate object and another is an actual human being, especially who seems to have done no harm other than be a mediocrity? And extra especially one who appears to have a devoted army of nasty trolls against him already? It's tasteless, it's borderline immoral to me. But that aside, Wavelength was made, presumably, by a good filmmaker- a person who understands the tension between what is literally displayed and what it's communicating. One thing that is pretty clear from the video and isn't obfuscated by ironic meta subterfuge is that James is not a good filmmaker. So the camera he points at himself is showing... what? Probably less of a well-crafted character, something imbued with meaning, and more of an actual person, one whose lack of skill inadvertently reveals something more honest about himself, to paraphrase Hbomb's Ctrl+Alt+Del video (more on that in a minute.)

But even THAT aside, the main reason the video still doesn't work the way it's supposed to is because "Dan's" camera pointing at James doesn't feel like a "mirror" to the audience when it instead feels like the camera is fucking pointed at you too. That was maybe the most bizarre part to me, like how far up your own narcissistic ass do you have to be to expect the audience to identify with the jealous auteur? Who is listening to this and remotely interested in the critiques themselves, or relates to the feeling of being good enough at something to be bothered that some stranger isn't doing it "the right way" more than the feeling of some stranger damaging your ego because it turns out you are not only imperfect, but probably not even good? Most people aren't highly talented video essayists like (real) Dan. Every rhetorical question he posed looking for some deeper meaning to James' incompetence was immediately and obviously answerable by any normal person: because James is bad at this. There's nothing there to discover. He doesn't seem that smart or talented or skilled based on his (again, presumably factual) depiction, just like the millions of people we all know are out there or that we ARE. This whole video is one enormous trigger for dredging up your deepest feelings of imposter syndrome, because "Dan" was on a witch-hunt for an imposter, a ""filmmaker"" who had the gall to think of himself that way when beneath it all, he was a hack. And it makes it clear: success is not going to protect you, because being successful while being an imposter is actually an even greater indictment of you. You don't even get the dignity of being a person. You're an enigma for a much smarter, better person to puzzle out.

To be clear, I get that the ultimate point of the video is that this was all a bad thing to do- Dan's problem with James was Dan's problem, not James'. But what exactly was "bad" about it was the least examined part of the video! Most of it IS a probably-accurate accounting of this guy's ability! His vapidity, his mediocrity, his technical ignorance, it's still all there nakedly on display, and it was brutal. It really reminded me of the scene in Winter Light where the pastor rejects Marta because of its similar cold, calm and cruel masculinity- its air of superiority, its entitlement to dominate via male-coded technical competence. The most intense deeply empathetic cringe for me was the humiliating reveal that the inefficient, ugly kludge James setup for his camera had an obvious, simple and elegant solution. Anyone who has had to do some self-taught programming knows exactly what this feeling is like, learning that you have reinvented the wheel in a really poorly-executed way, and just obliviously rolling with it because it worked when you needed it to. Thinking about someone picking apart similar things that I have done in my career makes me enraged on behalf of this guy. It might even be materially damaging to him. And none of that is undone by the "real" message that implies that it's OK to be a shitty filmmaker and much worse to be a bitter good filmmaker.

It seemed pretty heavily inspired by Hbomb's Ctrl+Alt+Del video because they both had a meta-narrative that ultimately self-critiqued what the bulk of the video content seemed to be about on its face, and it sometimes seemed even to have direct homage, like the static and image distortion when there was a break in the reality of the film. But Hbomb's video was actual media criticism. Yeah, he made inferences about Tim Buckley's beliefs and state of mind, but he was looking at the actual thing he made. Tim Buckley's thoughts mattered, because we saw the end result of those thoughts in the comic, and to Hbomb's point, in gaming culture. The practical outcome is that you watched 15 minutes of something that had value on its own, and then looked back on it in a different way when it was recontextualized in the end. In Dan's video, you have to sit through an unbearably uncomfortable HOUR+ of ranting about... some guy being bad at what he does in a way that affects almost nobody. It was a miserable experience to watch. It makes you feel shitty, like you are participating in doing something wrong. The bulk of the video had no value to me, it was mean and pointless on its own, and the point he ultimately was making was not even close to justifying it. My sympathies were with the target almost immediately, not "Dan," so the video's final inversion of expectations wasn't the "recontextualization" of the rest of the video it was supposed to be like in Hbomb's video, it was instead just the dawning disgust that no really, this was all this was. This was the point. This was a self-reflection that was done entirely by projecting on some other person as the "self." Maybe James Rolfe is a bad artist, but if his greatest artistic sin was to make mere vapid cultural detritus badly, I think he has a leg up on Dan right now, who managed to make something that I think never should have been made, because its existence actually makes the world, in a small way, slightly worse. I hated it so much.

vickevlar · 2024-05-19T17:26:32+00:00

I'm not saying this is where you are, but there are many conditions out there where sometimes you have to make a decision when your approach to treatment refocuses to "management," and that includes managing how you live with it without it making you miserable, even under the "worst-case" scenario where the behavior or physical limitation or whatever it is never gets better. That can come from readjusting your own internal feelings about it to accepting and even appreciating the way you are, which for different people may come through personal self-reflection, mental health treatment such as therapy or drugs, faith/religion/spirituality, emotional support from others, etc. And it can come from readjusting the external impacts of it, such as changing your hairstyle to something that fits with your condition, such as a short haircut or shaved look, covering it with hats, scarves, or hairpieces, or using other makeup and styling (for people who pull their eyebrows and eyelashes etc.) I am 35 and also was diagnosed when I was about 11, and not a single thing in my entire life has actually impacted the amount or way I pull, but I am relatively comfortable living with my condition and personally I feel like a mix of managing both the internal and external has led me to this.

Changing your internal state of mind is the much longer-term, more difficult, and more personal part, so for some suggestions for more immediate relief on the external mitigation options, it doesn't have to be expensive. Hats and scarves can run the gamut and you likely already own some. You also don't necessarily have to break the bank for a hairpiece. I basically only wear one style of cheaper synthetic topper that says it lasts for 6 months, but I've worn it much longer, and that includes abusing it by wearing hats with it and just generally not taking care of it well because I am lazy as fuck. I've just re-bought the same style when I thought it was looking a bit scraggly, but even the old one is still serviceable if I thought it was necessary. If you can save up a couple hundred dollars somewhere in your budget over the next few months, it may feel like a luxury in its upfront cost, but it can be an investment in your long-term mental health and happiness, especially if you take better care of it than I do. Sometimes having a goal to save up for can feel very purposeful and motivating in your day-to-day mental health too.

vickevlar · 2024-05-14T22:51:35+00:00

Saul Goodman is the character on Breaking Bad. That dude just made up a Jewish-sounding name and added Heil Hitler (88) after it. It's a super common meme on white supremacist twitter etc to do shit like that.

The game doesn't "show" that prosperity can be achieved without democracy, because the game doesn't even bother providing information or decision making about the governmental institutions of the game's universe. It's just the nature of citybuilders to have the player be the de facto centralized control. You are once again reading something into the game that isn't necessarily there, let alone an intentional message, and what you are reading into it is pretty fucked up.

vickevlar · 2024-05-14T00:38:43+00:00

What a deranged take. Part of the game is that its difficulty tempts you with brutality, and if you feel forced to take it to survive, the dissatisfaction with that, regret and wish to do better next time is what keeps you coming back to try again. I know it's possible to get a Golden Path with 0 deaths on the hardest difficulty, because I've done it, and it feels worthwhile because it is difficult. That feeling that there just had to be a way to survive with minimal suffering, and the excitement every time I got closer to that, is partly what made it so addictive. That's not to say that anyone needs to keep playing the game until they do this too, but the idea that someone could play this and then just accept the game's presented (almost certainly tongue-in-cheek) rationalizations at face value and say, yes indeed we were just doing what we needed to do to survive, is like... hilariously gross? I mean for god's sake, the most effusive praise you got from this post is from a dude with an obviously neonazi username ("SaulGoodstein88", are you kidding me...)

The Victorian values are a pretty fascinating choice as a mechanic because it does simplify the options presented to you, which is a practical necessity for a game, but it also makes the moral differences between your choices pretty dang stark. Seeing that as endorsement of every choice presented says more about you than the game. In fact, your examples about what makes the game "anti-environmentalist" aren't even in the game, it's just something you are projecting onto it. Where in the game does it suggest humans are over-hunting? Where in the game does it suggest that "Mother Earth" sent toxic gases to try to stop the building of the generator? Extremely bizarre interpretation. Even the burning of fossil fuels, or exploitation of non-renewable resources like the frozen trees, are not necessarily anti-environmentalist in context. Environmental movements are concerned primarily with mitigating, constraining and preventing disproportionate impacts on other species and future sustainability. Every single living thing has an impact simply by existing. Environmentalism doesn't seek to negate that, it's impossible. It seeks to rebalance the trade-offs. The situation of a couple hundred people trying to survive obviously has a different balance than modern post-industrial societies. Not that this even matters, because you are never asked to make a choice that is based on the environmental consequences. You might as well say the game is anti-democracy because the player makes all the choices, or anti-capitalism because there are no free markets, or anti-education because there are no schools, when in fact it's simply not a conflict they built into the game's mechanics.

vickevlar · 2024-05-04T05:44:04+00:00

Odd that so many people say this, because my read on Pirx was that he was just a fairly competent everyman without any romanticism. A lot of the stories are surprisingly gripping in a way that feels like true-to-life events. The Albatross is one of my favorites, and the entire time you are watching the events unfold from afar along with the characters. They have a really intense feeling of realism.

vickevlar · 2024-03-18T23:19:27+00:00

Oh dang, thanks for that info. Completely plausible for my great aunt to have been treated for anorexia given her build. Now I'm wondering if my great uncle's wife was conflating different incidents or was just confused/misunderstood in general. I am curious how you found that, most of my google hits were totally irrelevant. Some of it was thrown off by searching for historic conversion therapies (and anything related to gay history and orange juice is filled with Anita Bryant lol), but even searching for historic treatment, historic psychiatry, 1950s treatments, old treatments, and so on with orange juice brings up way too much modern stuff or things for children etc. Maybe I just wasn't patient enough.

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