Bananas. Diesel. Armadillos. The square root of 1,364.
Continue the randomness here….
The Random Thread: The Next Generation
- This topic has 1,001 replies, 27 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 6 months ago by
.
Author
-
Has anyone done LARP? I did once in some cave somewhere when I was maybe 13. I can’t even remember where other than there was a cave.
Even though the swords and all that were padded because it was all really dark if anyone came up there was a bit of panic and everyone lashing out with their weapons. It hurt quite a bit.
I haven’t, but I know some people who do this regularly, and the whole LARPing scene has, it seems to me, moved quite a lot from hitting each other with padded swords. There’s really fascinating stuff, where you roleplay for a whole weekend in like a Bladerunner kind of setting, or in a patriarchal rural society where the women turn to witches at night or something like that… a friend of mine posted about a zombie LARP taking place on an old submarine, that seemed like really fucking cool thing to do on a weekend.
-
Stupid question maybe but can you open windows in mega skyscrapers?
The New York City Building Code requires that residential buildings have an amount of “openable” window area related to the amount of floor area of habitable space, to allow natural ventilation; so even in the highest high-rise apartment buildings, some of the windows have to open. New commercial office buildings, on the other hand, typically have sealed windows and rely completely on mechanical ventilation.
-
This is one of the games my pal took part in, it’s called Conscience and it’s set in a WestWorld style setting (found a random blogpost about it):
Conscience is one of the hottest blockbuster games this year. At 92 players per run, I think they could have filled three runs with all the signups they received. The game is played in Fort Bravo, an old movie set in Tabernas where Sergio Leone filmed his spaghetti westerns. If that wasn’t enticing enough, it’s not just a Western game, but a Westworld game!
Framed in a mixture of western and corporate themes, Conscience intends to address subjects such as ethical choices, the nature of humanity, the consequences of one’s actions, and the limits of consciousness in AI. Who can resist?
I had a great time playing Conscience. To process my game, I wrote a lengthy report of my experience. All the scenes described below are scenes players gave me consent to publish, some scenes are left out. It is rife with both spoilers and mature content, so please think twice about clicking “read more”.
I played a member of the Maintenance team. Maintenance is the lowest tier of workers at the park. These underpaid, overworked grease monkeys keep the hosts in working condition. They work sixteen hours a day, have a designated number instead of a name and are the butt of many monkey jokes by the other employees.
Game technically, maintenance is there to experience getting shit on by other humans, and to provide type 2 fun for the hosts (the robots) In the park, they can have experiences in story mode, but in the corporate office, they are usually in analysis mode: blank slates that do exactly as they are commanded. The plot department provides hosts with new things to do, the behaviour department dishes out existential angst and psychological anguish, maintenance offers experiences of pure, impersonal objectification.
My character (496 Sarah Mersenne) wanted to get her foot into the Plot department. Her main way of dealing with the stress and boredom of her job was to have sex with beautiful young hosts. As far as she was concerned, hosts were objects, no different from an iPhone, a microwave or indeed a full-service Hitachi Magic Wand in the shape of a supermodel.
Fixing hosts was a combination of playing pretend and an app that lets you run hosts through a status check. At random intervals, the app would “trigger” a general malfunction, that we could only fix by leafing through a hefty tome to find the multi-stage solution. The first day, this was a minor inconvenience. The last day, it was terrifying. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The start of my game involved getting into my job. I love, love having a job in a larp. It adds buckets of immersion and it makes it very easy to play with small details and changes. This weekend, my job meant objectifying a lot of people.
There were a few ground rules for abuse scenes, like “Don’t touch naked people”, and “Never go into a Red Room if the door is closed”. But the main safety mechanic was “Negotiate the fuck out of everything”. It was basic, but it worked. After closing the Red Room door, I would instantly jump out of character and discuss requests for the scenes, triggers and limits.
After a while, I also got into the habit of quickly jumping OOC right before getting out of the Red Room again. Partly so I could quickly check in, but also so me and the player could share some excitement at the scene we just played. Seeing player enjoyment really helped me keep going. I also reached out to abused players on Discord to check in, and so we could squee at each other.
In the first 24 hours, I played a ton of Maintenance scenes:
Every morning we would pick up hosts from the warehouse and bring them into the Park. On our first pick up, a returning player quickly took me aside and said: “Mess with the hosts while you bring them in, it’s so much fun for them”. So I ran them around, commanded them to imitate my every movement (which turned into a beautiful Mexican wave), to “Feel post-coital satisfaction”, to “Enjoy the view”, and other things.
Some players preferred to be fixed naked to feel more objectified. Those we would take into The Red Room, where scenes involving nudity and sexual violence could be played out. Our Red Room had a scary-looking chair and mirrors. One player requested nudity and regular fixing, so we had a lovely scene where I used the host as an audiobook by making it read the Western book I was reading while I fixed it.And so on. The LARPing scene has become deeply weird, and I really want to get into it at some point.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
I haven’t, but I know some people who do this regularly, and the whole LARPing scene has, it seems to me, moved quite a lot from hitting each other with padded swords. There’s really fascinating stuff, where you roleplay for a whole weekend in like a Bladerunner kind of setting, or in a patriarchal rural society where the women turn to witches at night or something like that… a friend of mine posted about a zombie LARP taking place on an old submarine, that seemed like really fucking cool thing to do on a weekend.
ARG’s and LARP share a lot of elements. For me LARPing tends to be less organized and guided while ARGs – including Escape Room scenarios – have a very detailed structure and game nature to them. A lot of them could be a basis for a reality type game show akin to SURVIVOR or many of the other, less interesting, varieties. I notice many involved in these often are also involved in cosplay, of course, and the more complex Halloween Haunted Experiences that pop up every year as well.
On the other hand, I feel the popularity of both was more prevalent about 10 years ago, but that could just be when the media paid attention. Certainly, Covid put a dent into it.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
JPMorgan Chase Tower (Houston)
The JPMorgan Chase Tower, formerly Texas Commerce Tower, is a 305.4-meter (1,002-foot), 2,243,013-square-foot (208,382.7 m2),[3] 75-story skyscraper at 600 Travis Street in Downtown Houston, Texas, United States. It is currently the tallest building in the city, the tallest building in Texas, the tallest five-sided building in the world, the 22nd-tallest building in the United States, and the 107th-tallest building in the world.
3 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
Annoyingly approval was granted as part of a harbourside development to build this monstrosity –
– which is visible from all over the place, and now has to feature in the background still on the nightly news (on the right, over the bridge in the attached). Making things worse, it’s a high rollers’ casino and hotel.
2 users thanked author for this post.
-
the whole LARPing scene has, it seems to me, moved quite a lot from hitting each other with padded swords.
You are not kidding!
Truthfully though since most of the guys I played looked more like the Simpsons Comic Book Guy than a supermodel, the nudity and sexual activity would not have gone over as well.It seems to me that when I played Larping was taking its cues from D & D, whereas now it seems to be taking its cues from Second Life and other Adult themed MMORPGs.
-
Yeah, it seems like they’ve basically branched out into every genre of storytelling.
I mean, how much fun must it be to play a 1920 Cthulhu scenario?
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
This is an interesting read:
Before Envelopes, People Protected Messages With Letterlocking
For centuries, senders used folds, slits, and wax seals to guard correspondence from prying eyes.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
This is classic. What Ford says at the end:
Watch as he responds to someone who is supposedly a "magician" (but is clearly an evil sorcerer)- then tells him exactly where to go. 😂#ClassicHarrison https://t.co/M00ruqEh77
— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) April 30, 2021
-
-
-
-
The first-ever interview with John Swartzwelder, probably the most important comedy writer of the last thirty years:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/john-swartzwelder-sage-of-the-simpsons
4 users thanked author for this post.
-
Well, they’re definitely right about The Louvre, Brussels, Stonehenge and Agra Fort. And right but still kinda wrong about Paris and the Temple Bar district.
The Louvre is worth visiting but the Mona Lisa specifically they are right, it is small, far away and the room is rammed with people.
The one I agree with most is Hollywood. It’s a shithole. So much so it appears twice on the list!
Temple Bar is a complete tourist trap, overpriced and inauthentic but it has to be said is also a lot of fun.
Bali is too big a place to make that judgement on, some of it is too rammed like that but others are pretty remote and chilled out.
Egypt – Cairo is filthy but it does have its charms.
Bondi beach is much smaller than you’d imagine (hence the crowded bit), unlike Surfers Paradise which just goes on forever. Better weather aside is very similar to many small British seaside resorts. I think it’s just well known because of its convenient proximity to the city. It’s still quite nice though and well kept.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
Las Vegas is loads of fun for what it is, entertainment everywhere and you can eat and drink pretty cheaply. It’s a grown-up theme park but that’s kind of the whole point.
Brussels is fine, I wouldn’t go there on holiday but it has plenty of nice bars and restaurants.
Stonehenge is a nice site in that it’s been deliberately kept quite low-key and unspoiled. It does have that “smaller than you think” aspect and there isn’t a huge amount to see there but I like that it hasn’t been trumped up or embellished.
The Louvre is full of interesting and beautiful art, you could spend a week there. If you’re going there just for the Mona Lisa then you’re already just going to say you’ve seen it, in which case you deserve everything you get in that room.
And Paris more widely is one of my favourite cities that I’ve visited, I’ve been there on many occasions and I find new reasons to enjoy it every time. I’m looking forward to going back there some day with the kids.
-
I liked that link even though we can’t go anywhere now these days… It is just the thought of getting your hopes so high about a place that you see in postcards and travel brochures and when you finally get there, it is just the main tourist site to take photos but very little to nothing else around it.
2 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
Stonehenge is a nice site in that it’s been deliberately kept quite low-key and unspoiled. It does have that “smaller than you think” aspect and there isn’t a huge amount to see there but I like that it hasn’t been trumped up or embellished.
I am fascinated by Stonehenge but I’ve never been. For me it falls into the category of I want to know about it but I don’t need to look at it up close. I think an hour with a good book about it would be more educational, interesting, and probably more awe-inspiring than being able to say “Oh look, rocks”.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
You can just drive down the A303 and you’ll get almost as good a view of the stones as you would if you paid to see them. If you do it in the middle of the day, chances are the traffic will be slow enough that you’ll get a good 10 minutes staring at them, due to all the idiot Henge-neckers slowing down and going “ooh look, Stonehenge!” thus causing huge tailbacks.
Source: I used to drive down the A303 every weekend on the way to see my girlfriend.
-
Source: I used to drive down the A303 every weekend on the way to see my girlfriend.
You can level with us, it was more to see Stonehenge wasn’t it.
-
And right but still kinda wrong about Paris and the Temple Bar district.
Temple Bar is a complete tourist trap, overpriced and inauthentic but it has to be said is also a lot of fun.
The big problem is that Temple Bar got a rep as a cool place to hang because of quirky little shops, nice cafés and bars, good music venues and arts venues… and then the money moved in, pushing a lot of the quirky stuff out. There’s a fucking McDonalds in Temple Bar Square. Plus it became a destination of choice for British stag and hen dos, making it even less appealing to Dubs. A lot of the cool stuff is still there, like the IFI, the Project, Connolly Books, The Music Centre/Button Factory the Library Project and the weekend book stalls- but the core rep is still gone and people think of the Oliver St. John Gogarty and the Temple Bar and pissed-up tourists instead of the cool stuff that’s still there.
-
-
I liked that link even though we can’t go anywhere now these days… It is just the thought of getting your hopes so high about a place that you see in postcards and travel brochures and when you finally get there, it is just the main tourist site to take photos but very little to nothing else around it.
It is kind of true, but the thing to remember is these cities are all places with their own troubled history, where people make a living, where people live and die. So it’s not a fairy tale place, some parts of European cities are ugly and functional, they’re not just there to please the eyes of tourists. (Except maybe a place like Carlsbad in Czechia or some small cities in Germany and Italy that live for tourism.)
-
I like Antwerp, it is nicer than Brussels but more of a real city than Bruges.
Fucking Bruges.
-
But it’s like a fucking fairy tale!
4 users thanked author for this post.
-
After I killed them, I dropped the gun in the Thames, washed the residue off me hands in the bathroom of a Burger King, and walked home to await instructions. Shortly thereafter the instructions came through. “Get the fuck out of London, youse dumb fucks. Get to Bruges.” I didn’t even know where Bruges fucking was.
[pause]
It’s in Belgium.4 users thanked author for this post.
-
There’s a Lord of the Rings Monopoly, which sounds completely pointless and stupid, but then when you look at the pictures of the board:
https://forbiddenplanet.com/323717-lord-of-the-rings-monopoly/?mc_cid=e1ac43b2ca&mc_eid=c2bbd2211b
it’s even more stupid than you at first assume. They’ve obviously replaced all the properties with Middle Earth locations, the paper money with faux gold coins, the dog and the top hat with hobbits, and the free parking with………well, it’s still free parking, with a car picture on it???
Come on, that’s not even trying. At the very least you could make it “free stabling” with a horse on it, or you could be actually clever and make it “Tom Bombadil’s house” or something.
Good grief.
-
-
-
-
If this gets a lot of replies, this can be split off to its own thread… Just saying
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
I for one am very interested in the option “implants”…
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
I’m going for “attractive male”, “insanely rich” and “vampirism”.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
Immortal (which I think would automatically include healing), Teleport, and Intellect
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
I for one am very interested in the option “implants”…
Two words: “laser breasts”
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
So it’s settled then: Attractive Female, Implants and Size Manipulation.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
If you can do size manipulation, do you need implants?
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
Immortal (which I think would automatically include healing),
Always assume “Monkey Paw” rules are in effect. You’ll live forever but in a decaying broken undying body. Have fun with that!
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
And don’t accidentally shoot your hands off when your feeling your laser breasts.
You’ve obviously given this a lot of thought, Todd.
[reminding myself not to visit Sugarland TX]
-
And don’t accidentally shoot your hands off when your feeling your laser breasts.
You’ve obviously given this a lot of thought, Todd.
[reminding myself not to visit Sugarland TX]
Sounds like someone is jealous that they don’t have laser breasts!
-
An old Soviet joke:
-Is it correct that Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev won a luxury car at the All-Union Championship in Moscow?
-In principle, yes. But first of all it was not Grigori Grigorievich Grigoriev, but Vassili Vassilievich Vassiliev; second, it was not at the All-Union Championship in Moscow, but at a Collective Farm Sports Festival in Smolensk; third, it was not a car, but a bicycle; and fourth he didn’t win it, but rather it was stolen from him.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
so… attractive female looks, implants, and immortality?
I thought Christian already had laser breasts?
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
-
If this gets a lot of replies, this can be split off to its own thread… Just saying
Intellect, Unarmed Combat, Superspeed. Sure, that’s not OP, but think about how a strategic speedster who doesn’t just really on their speed would be to a superhero team. Given how many Unarmed Combat systems emphasize the ability of a trained person to defend against a stronger but untrained opponent, and add the ability to move so your opponent can’t see you, and the ability to prepare strategies at superspeed, I think such a superperson would be able to hold their own with someone with Thing-level strength, even without being superstrong.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
-
-
So I watched a few episodes of the Clone Wars yesterday because my kid forced me too (the older one, not the baby), and there was one plot where there was an attack using nano-tech and I thought for a second, hey, I mean, midichlorians and shit, sure, but what I could’ve totally gone with would’ve been if they’d made this all about nano-tech – see, some really old ancient civilisation built a nano-tech swarm that was programmed to recreate and build more of themselves and spread out and also to basically do everything their builders told them to do and then that ancient civilisation was wiped out, but the nano-swarm continued to spread across the galaxy, hidden, undetected, populating everything until they are just everywhere including even the vacuum of space, and it turns out that there are some people whose, uh, let’s say brainwaves, are just a little more similar to the species of that old ancient civilisation and it turns out these people can ask the nano-swarm to do shit for them if they get into the right head-space and that’s how the Force manipulates objects and shit.
So there you go. Proper hard-sci-fi explanation for the Force, yeah?
(And I am sure I am the first one to think about it like that, right? Right?)
-
If Lucas had explained it that way I think the reaction would have been the same as for the midi-chlorians. I don’t think the problem was with how he explained it so much as the fact that there was an explanation at all. The Force shouldn’t be explained, it should remain mystical and spiritual to a large extent.
Nice idea though.
5 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
-
and then there’s also talk of Baby Yoda’s “M-count” in Mandalorian, which a lot of people assumed to be a reference to midichlorians.
No, it stands for “Merchandisability-Count”, which is why it’s super-high.
-
The only thing flat-earthers have to fear is sphere itself.
7 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
-
My basement is full of videotapes, DVDs and Blu-Ray collections of films and television shows (not just mine, but those of my two children who left them behind when they moved away) that I will likely never watch again; ditto Compact Discs (moreso than the DVDS, as I am a bigger fan of music than of video) since I moved over to (first) iTunes/iPods and then Spotify. The problem is, I just can’t bring myself to toss these things away, so there they sit in boxes, waiting for my kids to throw them away after I die. :)
3 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
-
Game of Thrones is, I think, one of those shows where the final season killed off a lot of desire for rewatching (same with How I Met Your Mother, which, despite loving the early seasons of, I still haven’t touched again since watching the final season). It’d be interesting to see sales figure for the season boxsets before and after the final season.
I think I’ve said this before, but it seems to me that when a popular and/or long-running show ends one of three things happens: 1) it sticks around in the public consciousness (and in heavy repeat rotations) for years, like Friends. 2) it gently fades from the memory of all but the diehard fans, like, I don’t know, King of Queens or JAG or 3) pretty soon after it ends, almost everyone collectively goes “remember when we were all mad about x? What was that about?” and it’s barely thought about again, like Heroes maybe.. And I think, given the move to long-form story-telling over the past couple of decades, the strength of the finale can have a big impact on that last one.
As far as physical media goes, I’m sticking with it. There’s definitely a convenience to watching TV shows especially on streaming services, an easy way to quickly binge through them, but I just have no trust in them providing the best possible version of those shows and certainly not long term. There’s no guarantee that a show’s going to be on there forever – Amazon is always having shows disappear, sometimes season by season, while Disney+ is developing a habit of temporarily removing shows with no notice for no given reason – that they’re not going to have been messed with – Disney+ again and their crude edits to their 90s Marvel cartoons for flashing lights – or even that they’ll have all the episodes – Netflix is missing several episodes of Always Sunny because they’ve determined they feature blackface (which, yeah, I guess they do) but there’s nothing there to actually tell you they’ve been removed, they’ve just been erased.
Between all that and random service and internet problems, I’d definitely prefer to keep a physical copy of a show I care about.
-
When I moved, I found two blu ray players and a box of DVDs gathering dust and gave them all away. The hassle of hooking up the players, loading the players and switching the input on the TV became too great to bother with(yes I know I am lazy). I realize this leaves me at the fate of my internet but problems are few and I have a bookshelf full of books to read if it does happen.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
My worst one is around 20 years ago HMV used to do sales where you could buy 3 VHS movies for £10 and I bought quite a few as I couldn’t resist a bargain. Never mind re-watching value, there were a few in there I never watched. Then I moved overseas and never had a VHS player again.
They’ve been sat there in my bedroom in my mother’s house for 18 years. Maybe if I wait long enough they’ll become super valuable like old Nintendo games suddenly have.
-
Cassette tapes are making a comeback. VHS should be the next big thing.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
Game of Thrones is, I think, one of those shows where the final season killed off a lot of desire for rewatching (same with How I Met Your Mother, which, despite loving the early seasons of, I still haven’t touched again since watching the final season). It’d be interesting to see sales figure for the season boxsets before and after the final season.
It wasn’t so long ago that I watched the back end of HIMYM and like I think I posted here last year, I thought the last season was okay (though the ending itself was an outrageous piece of shit), but… even though it isn’t all that old yet, it feels like it belongs to a different age. All that hilarious sexism and gaslighting was already iffy fifteen years ago, but today it really feels weird.
3 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
The real question is, why is this not a movie yet?
Nein Eleven
2 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
-
-
Also, in the movie, you would be considered a suspect. “How did you know ahead of time” “who told you” “Where are your fellow conspirators”
True – it would probably be better to stay quiet and start investing in Halliburton, Hedge Funds and Credit Default Swaps.
-
-
You might want to present your links in a way that means people actually have a clue what they’re about Al, if you want anyone to actually click on them.
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
You might want to present your links in a way that means people actually have a clue what they’re about Al, if you want anyone to actually click on them.
I just said the exact same thing in the Relationship Tread.
2 users thanked author for this post.
-
-
This is quite the headfuck: US wealth distribution, presented in an interesting, interactive way. Get ready for some scrolling….
-
Why do people who specify their preferred pronouns always write it like “She/Her”? Why bother writing “Her”? Everybody who speaks English knows that the genitive of She is Her. You could have just said “She” and we would have inferred the rest.
The only reason I can think of is that some people mix their pronouns and could be “She/His”, so you need to be explicit about the genitive as well as the nominative, but I’ve never seen that and I can think of no logical reason why anyone would do it.
Serious question, because I really can’t figure out the thinking behind it
-
-
This is quite the headfuck: US wealth distribution, presented in an interesting, interactive way. Get ready for some scrolling….
Cool, that’s the starter for my lesson on social mobility in the US and the failure of the American Dream sorted out.Cheers!
1 user thanked author for this post.
-
The fuck?
2 users thanked author for this post.
- The topic ‘The Random Thread: The Next Generation’ is closed to new replies.