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[AndyHilmer]

That would be why Europe, China, and Japan use trains?

Anyway, apart from some folks still trying to polish the Insufficient Intelligent AI fece, there’s been some good discussion.

[gadgetgirl]

Toward Better Communications on the BBS

I mean consider. Think about what you do and where it doesn’t work well, figure out what you can to improve it, and certainly ask as needed. But that has to be with the honest intention of making communicating with you easier for them. For instance, this question doesn’t count at all because it is evidently rhetorical – you’ve started talking about how you want your communications to work before even hearing me answer. It’s all well and good to say communication is between equals, but that doe…

[MrMonkey]

I don’t know if this is appropriate game etiquette, or not, but I really enjoyed these posts.

I literally (as in the literal meaning of “literally”, and not the figurative meaning, over which I will fight you) laughed out loud. More than once.

Redoubtable Downtown Space Abbey - Turn 1 - Welcome to Weatherby!

[VenomandVirginity] “Oh, for heaven’s… sir! That is… I mean, Ssskidwish! Ssskidwish, present yourself immediately!” “Whaddaya want, Lieutenant?” “Ahem… sir. We’re in public now. Ixnay on the iplay. I’m the social superior now, remember?” “Ah, right, right… (ahem). 'Ow might I be o’service today, your lizardship?” [whispering] “Sir, I think we might have miscalculated a bit. I thought it a sure bet that we’d maximize our investment by infiltrating society in the role of fetching and innocen…

and

Redoubtable Downtown Space Abbey - The Leviathan Club

"A pleasure to meet you, Dr. Franksenketchup (@Old). Your ‘biological creations’ idea reminds me of an awful rumor I’d heard recently, from the Historical Society. The story — although only God knows its veracity — is that someone, when asked for their heraldry, provided a drawing of a coat — that is to say, the garment — with humanoid arms growing on it. "Can you imagine? I can understand messing up the tinctures and mistakenly ending up with armes à enquérir, but in this case, the owner mu…

[Nightflyer]

Marjins Þridus

After all, to other up (“Fuck you pig!” from a poor PoC) is awesome and is a fundamentally different act than to other down (“The poor are stupid.” from a rich white lady). No. No, no, no, damn it, for the love of all that’s good in the world, NO. The rich white person who thinks that people on welfare thinks that they’re punching up. The “free speech advocates” who quote Strom (and attribute to Voltaire) and say, “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to cri…

[gadgetgirl]

Race relations

I think it might just be the journalists making mistakes, but I can’t tell without more details. Because of the way these are presented, I’d say that the listed variables are the most highly correlated ones in each category- these all being variants of the same underlying variable would make sense in that case. I think the actual model will be different. If you read the article closely, it doesn’t actually say that these are the characteristics that make up the best model, just that these are t…

[MrMonkey]

There’s something about this post…

Oh, how I dream of a place for me

Oh, it would be one hell of a miracle. When I was a kid, I used to design my own… well, superhero lairs. I mean floorplans containing everything I could think of that I’d want. Huge garages, laboratories, libraries, observatories, secret passages, gymnasia, theaters. Kinda like those myriad cutaways of the Baxter Building (home of the Fantastic Four) they used to periodically publish: [baxterbldg1] [baxterbldg2] [baxterbldg3] [baxterbldg4] …except mine were always just floorplans, not isom…

[MrMonkey]

This kind of dedication to craft is what I love about the people on this site.

Redoubtable Downtown Space Abbey - The Leviathan Club

RGVhciBCYXJ0bGVib3QsCkhvcGUgdGhpcyB0cmFuc21pc3Npb24gYXJyaXZlcyB0byBmaW5kIHlvdSBmdWxseSBwYXRjaGVkIGFuZCB1cGRhdGVkLiBZZXN0ZXJzb2wsIEkgd2FzIGJyb3dzaW5nIHRocm91Z2ggYW4gb2xkIGRhdGFtYXJ0IGJ5IHRoZSBDbGlmZnMgb2YgRGFsZWssIGFuZCBmb3VuZCB0aGlzIGtpbGxlciBhcHAuIGh0dHBzOi8vaS5wb3N0aW1nLmNjL3ZIN05nR3lOL2ltYWdlLnBuZwoKTWF5IGl0IG5ldHdvcmsgd2l0aCB5b3VyIHNhdmVmaWxlcyBvZiBvdXIgZ3VydSBtZWRpdGF0aW9ucyBvbiBkZWVwIGxlYXJuaW5nLCBhcyBpdCBkaWQgZm9yIG1lLiAKTWlzcyB5b3UgdG8gYml0cywKfkNhdGE=

[Nightflyer]

I don’t get it.

[smulder]

It’s a text message piped through base64.

It’s like putting spoiler tags around something, except it takes slightly more work to read it, and the reader has to recognize the output format in order to know what to do with it.

[Nightflyer]

Now I got it.

[MrMonkey]

I don’t get it.

It occurs to me that my enthusiasm is a little in-jokey, which is kind of sucky for the folks who don’t recognize the reference, so here’s a hint: https://www.base64decode.org (copy and paste).

The encoding bit was the visceral, in-character, icing on the cake, but mostly my admiration was for the commitment to the characters from the RDSA. In my imagination, someone serendipitously ran across an interesting image¹ that reminded them of our little game, and then shared that in a way that was kind of both a puzzle and a treat. (I don’t know if that’s really what happened, but I like my version).

cc: @fintastic

1. or maybe not a real image? I have a certain affinity for old-school sci-fi paperback cover art, to the extent that I buy books I’ve no intention of reading based purely on their covers, but I’ve so far been unable to determine if the referenced tome is real or imaginary.

ETA: Doh! ninja’d.

Now I got it.

[kxkvi]

The image seems to be from Phil-Are-Go:
https://phil-are-go.blogspot.com/2018/11/spaceprom.html

[MrMonkey]

Still, to my mind, the worst offenders are know-nothings: they are feckin’ anathema . It doesn’t matter to me whether it’s some academic who learned some “rules” and has applied them indiscriminately for 35 years, or whether it’s someone who figures that his opinion is just as good as anyone else’s… without researching the topic.

https://bbs.elsewhere.cafe/t/the-other-place-gone-evil/3182/130?u=mrmonkey

[fiddlingfrog]

Back at the other place:

You’re going to need a historian to find out where all your goalposts were.

[mindysan33]

This historian tried, to little avail!

[MrMonkey]

I had the exact same reaction upon seeing that picture!

Well done!

https://bbs.elsewhere.cafe/t/wanderfounds-tasmanian-migration/3222/687?u=mrmonkey

[SallyM]

You Good?

Ok, afaik, it’s a conflation of things. November 1 in the Christian calendar is All Saints Day, and November 2 is All souls Day, so the period is associated with the remembrance of passed loved ones. It’s also at the end of autumn heading into winter, so it’s tied to thoughts of night and cold and protecting yourself from bad times. It’s also associated with Celtic traditions. Samhain is 1 Nov, and November is Mí Shamhna. It’s also the ancient Celtic new year. Celtic religions saw liminal pla…

[SallyM]

Elections 2023-2024

Yes indeed. The data is bad because the samples are hugely skewed (can they reach you on a cell phone via an unknown out-of-state number which becomes a robo-call? nor me either). Then the pollsters, those not being paid for a specific result, attempt to fix their results by scaling for their skewed sample using quite arcane unpublished methods (“well we got two surveys completed by under 30 Hispanic males, so lets weight those two by uh… oh… [consults crosstabs from an equally faulty 2022 su…

[Millie_Fink]

BoingBoing move to substack

For me it’s like there was this crusty old punk bar, dark and a little dirty, flyers plastering the walls, and I would wander on in to the back booth and all my friends old and new would be there sharing a pitcher of Old Style, laughing, arguing, discussing, occasionally dropping a quarter in the ancient jukebox full of random 45’s, or the Elvira Mistress of the Dark pinball machine in the corner. The place was rightly famous and storied, and sometimes a big act would play there, but for us it w…

[SallyM]

Elections 2023-2024

I’m not sure I agree. If Harris is actually up by double-digits, then it would be relieving a lot of anxiety right now. Accurate polls would be much, much better than what we have. And since what we have is shit, it should be public knowledge that it’s shit instead of pretending that it’s accurate. It would also create urgency around improving polling methods to make them more accurate instead of using old methods that don’t work anymore. Right now, pollsters have no motivation to radically cha…