Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

going to hide from all your shitposts until the next 15-minute long goddamn millennial fad <3

OMG DIAZ ❤️​💛​💚​💙​💜​🏳️‍🌈​

zebratron is noh hush a bush push leopold

It's not the writing that's draining. It's not the research that's draining. It's the communicating.

When it's just me versus the database, everything's fine and I can almost kinda focus and I love my job.

But this month has all been judging the work of actual people, with no choice but to tell them at least SOMETHING about what I think of their work. Every word carries a risk of committing offense, and it costs me about two spoons per hour just to run the social filters. ;_;

Other than that, I'm thinking this will be pretty freeform, with just the bare minimum of rules necessary to give people inspiration.

Does this sound like something that might be fun? I'm especially curious what @ElectricKeet​, @Vedia_Lupae​, and @green​ think, since you were my original batch of volunteers and have dibs on any actual playtests. ^_^

I'd especially love volunteers to help with the game design aspect of this, if it sounds interesting at all.

Each hero, team, organization, civilization, etc. created during the game gets its own card, with a couple of power-ranking stats. (This is mostly for narrative and record-keeping purposes; no character really "belongs" to any given player.)

The campaign is divided into eras: Pulp, Golden, Silver, Bronze, Dark, Modern, and Post-Modern. A new set of trope cards is introduced with each era, gradually introducing things like team-ups, what-ifs, & multiverses.
(con't)

So. I teased something about an RP experiment a couple of months ago, but I don't think I ever explained what it was!

I want a storygame RPG that'll create an entire comic-book continuity in the course of a single campaign, from the first "powered" pulp hero to dimension-shattering Retcon Crises.

Planning on card-based mechanics, using the Silicon Dawn deck with all the extras. Each player turn equals one full comic issue.

(con't)

(That said, fuck the "freeze peach" mentality, too. Most of the "speech" that crowd is defending is deliberately, painstakingly crafted to be low-quality and crowd out meaningful exchanges. What those bastards did to Leslie Jones, for example, should have been punished with banning, mutings, censurings, blockings, and repeated bludgeonings. That's not only not protected speech, I'm not sure I'd call it speech. Speech has content. -_- )

I don't want to silence these Earnest Young People. I just want them to consider what the return is on some of these linguistic causes du jour.

I think memetic hygiene is like any other sort of hygiene: if you achieve perfection at it, allergies develop. (Read Ian McDonald's Out On Blue Six for a vivid example.)

I don't want my logosphere squeaky clean. I want it a little sleazy, and governed by context and genuine kindness. I'll decide when it's time to break a taboo, thank you.

Keeping blatantly hostile slurs, with no valid use except for degradation, away from public discourse is a noble and entirely valid goal.

Less comfortable with people policing words, however problematic their etymologies, that are not used with hostile intent and/or have plainly evolved past original meanings. (Example: "dumb," whose etymology is REAL ableist.)

I worry that they aspire for purity. Purity makes me nervous. It never ends well. I escaped purism, and I'm not going back.

As a budding young Discordian, age 13 or 14, I was home sick and caught an episode of a daytime talkshow.

There was an old Bible-thumper on it, arguing Huckleberry Finn must be banned. He had a big' sign that counted how often the book used the words "hell" and "damn."

Every time he was contradicted, he thumped the sign. He had no other argument. The words' very presence was argument enough.

Some of my allies are starting to remind me of that guy. I really dislike linguistic purism.

Still pretty meh.

Back is still improving, but I still can't stoop or slouch. The latter is a particularly annoying imposition against my bohemian lifestyle. :)

Things are fine otherwise. I'm just feeling exceptionally grumpy about politics again, both community and national.

Feeling old, feeling alienated from The Kids. Feeling old and cherished intellectual boundaries threatened by people with the best of intentions. Worried about forces of ideological drift and becoming obsolete.

"Annotator" in this case basically means "work-from-home geographical research." It's the same job I do, basically, only in Chinese: quality control for a GPS/maps company, working from a sheet of guidelines and determining the quality of randomly generated results for various real web searches. It mostly just requires good research skills and patience. Probably pays something like $20 to start-- I don't have that info, sadly-- most likely 15-20 hours a week.

Here's the full info I have for that researcher position:

"We have a USA opening for a Chinese-language annotator position. If you know someone who can legally work in the USA, is able to work 15-20 hours, and is proficient in the written Chinese language, please feel free to forward the attached listing to them. If they are interested, have them contact ext-albert.lin@here.com with their resume."

Meh.

I guess I have a lot to be grateful for right now, since my back's mending fast. Peg's been ultra-nice to me, even handling her being (quite understandably) a bit tired of my company fairly graciously. It looks like we're probably not on the hook for any of this financially, and things will soon be back to normal.

So I can have a nice, normal mope about everything. Just the usual isolation, ennui, and frustration with human nature. I'm okay, just feeling drained as fuck.

Kids, I can not emphasize enough that I am a PROFESSIONAL. Do NOT mix opiates and geographical research*.

*unless of course you're some kind of dullard with zero kinesthetic intelligence who somehow injured yourself doing basic household chores, but I know you're all better than that O:)

Oh, before I forget:

Anybody out there REALLY fluent in Chinese (mostly written) and need a job?

My bosses are hiring. It's basically the same geographical work I do (i.e. really cushy if you're good at lateral thinking), but in Chinese. That and basic web literacy are the main requirements, though knowing a bit about global culture sure doesn't hurt.

Let me know if this interests anybody!

My boss-in-law just announced a geographic research challenge at work: find 10 ultra-obscure items on Streetview and report findings. There are no rewards and no prizes, just an opportunity to outscore the other annotators.

I think you can guess how I feel about this, but here's an Artist's Conception of my current expression just in case.

https://www.wpromote.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/stinko.jpg #moodsnapshot