DataNinja's Scintillating Digital Random Banter #231

[Peelee]

It's every couple of weeks thing, usually when there's very little that needs doing thing.

Like, I've taken a couple of psych classes and I know people who suffer from clinical depression to varying degrees so I have an idea of what to look out for. If I'm depressed then the episodes are mild and infrequent.

...Though now you have me worried. Depression is one of those diseases that just isn't fair. Sometimes it goes away on its own and sometimes you just need to keep working on it for the rest of your life. Some people can manage it by changing their diet or getting more exercise while other people need years of drugs and therapy before they are reliably capable of even making the effort to get out of bed.

That's terrifying. That's legitimately terrifying.

...And now I'm remembering that depression is a common comorbidity with autism spectrum disorders.

So, there goes my chances of getting to sleep at a reasonable

Don't be worried, what I was talking about was wholly unrelated to depression. This is a great example of why medical and legal issues are usually best left restricted to professionals who went to schools for those things. You shouldn't be any more afraid of depression after I said anything than before. I'm sorry that I got you worried.

[Rater202]

There is an X-Men associated character named Meggan Pucceanu. She is a mutant of mixed human and fae ancestry, and while she has a number of exceptional powers(how many are from being a mutant and how many are from being half-fairy aren't made clear) I'm most focused on her "empathetic shapeshifting."

She can shapeshift into anything she wants or needs to be but can also adopt traits based on how other people perceive her—as an infant she instinctively grew wolf-like fur to keep herself warm but the rest of the community she was born into let rumors go wild causing baby Megan to grow batwings and fangs and claws and such because her tendency to grow fur caused people to perceive her as some kind of monster.

As an adult she's demonstrated the ability to turn into a wide variety of animals, including fantastical creatures such as dragons, will automatically manifest things like fur or gills when in circumstances where they would be beneficial or requires for survival, and has even been able to replicate the abilities of other superhumans by changing herself to resemble them(Up to and including being able to duplicate the Power Cosmic by turning into a female version of the Silver Surfer.)

This probably the best Superpower to have if you can only pick one and I can think of a billion uses for it.

I'm not alone in thinking that, am I?

[Lord Raziere]

looking at her page on the marvel database on Fandom.....(I suggest bookmarking sites like this in case anyone wants to keep up, its probably no substitute for actually reading a source, but it handily and efficiently tells you what you need to know. there are tons of fandom wikis for this kind of thing)

I dunno there is the downside of it being influenced by other peoples feeling, which can be detrimental. and without her empathy sensing abilities, a required secondary power without which one might not know what feelings will influence her shapeshifting or be able to broadcast her feelings to make people control theirs. there is also a question of its link to her elemental powers and whether or not if you got the empathetic shapeshifting without the elemental parts whether you'd be able to adapt to the environment or not. there is some question of whether this is a distinct power or three powers that somehow got tied together due to her unique biology. like what if the empathy power is just a detriment by making her shapeshifting vulnerable to other minds influencing it at all, and thus it gets better because you WOULDN'T have it? but if on the other hand without the empathy sensing you can't turn into anything well because through the empathy your subtly gleaning information from other things that help visualize and detail the transformation properly without you realizing it?

its a little complex given whats involved, I can't say that it would for sure that it would work the way it does without the full set.

[Rater202]

Did anyone have yearly "lectures" in Highschool where a guest speaker would get everyone in the auditorium and give an inept discussion of complex topics like "drugs" or "violence"

My highschool did that. I can't remember all of them, but one year there was a woman who spent the entire time crying and saying that you shouldn't watch scary movies because of how violent they are(and blaming her crying on pregnancy hormones) and another year the guy giving an anti-drug lecture started his speech by explaining how to make crack.

[Anonymouswizard]

Did anyone have yearly "lectures" in Highschool where a guest speaker would get everyone in the auditorium and give an inept discussion of complex topics like "drugs" or "violence"

No. But I had my own weirdness at secondary school such as having sex ed during PE classes.

My highschool did that. I can't remember all of them, but one year there was a woman who spent the entire time crying and saying that you shouldn't watch scary movies because of how violent they are(and blaming her crying on pregnancy hormones) and another year the guy giving an anti-drug lecture started his speech by explaining how to make crack.

Okay.... both are weird, although I can see a potential point to the second one if you want to make people aware of how easy drugs can be to create (I mean, I still wouldn't include it in a lecture, but I can see why some people might). I'm going to be honest, it's more likely because the school just had a slot for PCHE or something they needed to fill.

[enderlord99]

I've had "do not create drugs according to these easy and very precise instructions" before. It's usually called "D.A.R.E."

[Bartmanhomer]

Yes; it's fairly common with ADHD.

I got ADHD and Autism as well.

[Anonymouswizard]

I got ADHD and Autism as well.

I have Dyspraxia and Autism, and at this point it's not worth investigating to see if I have ADHD. I have some of the symptoms, but they're the ones shared with most ND conditions anyway.

[Bartmanhomer]

I have Dyspraxia and Autism, and at this point it's not worth investigating to see if I have ADHD. I have some of the symptoms, but they're the ones shared with most ND conditions anyway.

Cool. I have a question: What's Dyspraxia?

[Rater202]

I was tested for ADD as a kid. It came back negative but considering that the methods of making me sleep so they could do the test involved spending an hour telling me to open and close my eyes every minute and then giving me five shots of NyQuil when that didn't work I'm not sure how well I trust the competency of those particular people.

Of course, the entire thing was caused becuase a psychologist who had a very thick accent was asking me questions that weren't not very clear. You'd think a psychologist would have known that clarity is key when talking to an autistic child.

"Can joo vock on a likea joor on da dye-robe?"

*A minute is spent before my mom clarifies that she's asking if I can walk like I'm on a tight rope.*

"I think?"

What I'm remembering as a minute passes before she clarifies "walk" so I walk, but normally becuase I don't see the connection...

God damn, I didn't even know why I was there.

It should have been obvious that I wasn't following her instructions becuase I didn't understand them but no, the problem was on me, not the lady with the ridiculously thick accident asking me questions instead of just telling me what she wanted me to do.

[Anonymouswizard]

Cool. I have a question: What's Dyspraxia?

A neurodiverse condition that causes coordination difficulties. It includes stuff like an impaired ability to organise oneself, a lack of body sense, and various other effects. One is a tendency to be a mixture of right and left handed, apparently I have a more accurate left hand despite writing with my right.

There's more to it. but as I'm not a professional I can't explain it much better. Interestingly one of the things I had to do to get diagnosed was prove that I don't have an abnormally low IQ (possibly one of the few cases I'm not against applying IQ to individuals, it was just being used to rule out other possible causes).

[Bartmanhomer]

A neurodiverse condition that causes coordination difficulties. It includes stuff like an impaired ability to organise oneself, a lack of body sense, and various other effects. One is a tendency to be a mixture of right and left handed, apparently I have a more accurate left hand despite writing with my right.

There's more to it. but as I'm not a professional I can't explain it much better. Interestingly one of the things I had to do to get diagnosed was prove that I don't have an abnormally low IQ (possibly one of the few cases I'm not against applying IQ to individuals, it was just being used to rule out other possible causes).

Wow. Thank you. Now I learn something new. Knowledge is power.

[Jasdoif]

I was tested for ADD as a kid. It came back negative but considering that the methods of making me sleep so they could do the test involved spending an hour telling me to open and close my eyes every minute and then giving me five shots of NyQuil when that didn't work I'm not sure how well I trust the competency of those particular people.

Interesting, my utter inability to go to sleep except late at night was one of the reasons I was tested for ADHD in the first place, I think. Less so than the inability to hold still for any length of time, or the ability to get math problems done really fast when I was able to concentrate on them (fairly rare but far more common than other schoolwork), I'm sure....Then again I was like eight and I don't have clear memories of being tested except that the walls of the place were an ugly olive green.

In retrospect, the timeframe puts it shortly after the "hey, we're gonna call this ADHD instead of ADD now" decision; so maybe they were specifically watching for the "hyperactive" part at the time?

[Rogar Demonblud]

Man am I glad they didn't have this stuff when I was a kid. Given the 'appropriate' sugar intake back then (as much sweets as possible is good for kids), most of us would have been pegged as ADD.

[Rater202]

Man am I glad they didn't have this stuff when I was a kid. Given the 'appropriate' sugar intake back then (as much sweets as possible is good for kids), most of us would have been pegged as ADD.

That's a common misconception, while simple sugars are a decent source of quick energy they don't actually make you "hyper" even as a kid unless you're already prone to hyperactivity.

"No we can't put an extra scoop of sugar in the kool-aid, you'll be bouncing off the walls" isn't exactly the best thing to tell a kid in the first place("If I eat enough sugar I'll be spider-man!") but i's more likely that eating too many sweets will just make the kid feel kind of sick.

Likewise, from what I've read those food dyes that supposedly cause hyperactivity... They cause hyperactivity in lab rats but for a human child to get an equivalent dose they'd need to drink a quart or two of the undiluted dyes. If red dye 4 made your kid hyper it's becuase they're unusually susceptible to it... Or they were already gonna be hyper.

Though, granted, I'm biased a bit: I think ADHD and other hyperactivity disorders are drastically overdiagnosed and that medication is prescribed for them too much. I'm not anti-psychological medication, but the treatments for ADHD are harsh stimulants—in some places they literally prescribe methamphetamine to treat ADHD.

I don't think "won't sit still in a way that's convenient for their teacher" is a valid way of diagnosing these things and I think that we're a bit too quick to pump dangerous drugs into children just to get them to sit still. Yeah, if you actually have it they'll help you calm down and stay focused, and some people have it bad enough that they need it but...

There was a girl I went to high school with who was diagnosed with ADHD. She was consistently more hyperactive after taking her medication, which tells me that... Something wasn't quite right with that.

[Peelee]

That's a common misconception, while simple sugars are a decent source of quick energy they don't actually make you "hyper" even as a kid unless you're already prone to hyperactivity.

I was just about to say the same thing! Ya done beat me to the punch.

[Fyraltari]

That's a common misconception, while simple sugars are a decent source of quick energy they don't actually make you "hyper" even as a kid unless you're already prone to hyperactivity.

There's also a bit of placebo effect.

[Jasdoif]

Man am I glad they didn't have this stuff when I was a kid. Given the 'appropriate' sugar intake back then (as much sweets as possible is good for kids), most of us would have been pegged as ADD.

Let me put it this way: most kids I knew could watch TV without fidgeting and suddenly needing to get up and run around after several minutes. I usually couldn't. (Commercial breaks had a use!)

Though, granted, I'm biased a bit: I think ADHD and other hyperactivity disorders are drastically overdiagnosed and that medication is prescribed for them too much. I'm not anti-psychological medication, but the treatments for ADHD are harsh stimulants—in some places they literally prescribe methamphetamine to treat ADHD.

I don't think "won't sit still in a way that's convenient for their teacher" is a valid way of diagnosing these things and I think that we're a bit too quick to pump dangerous drugs into children just to get them to sit still. Yeah, if you actually have it they'll help you calm down and stay focused, and some people have it bad enough that they need it but...

There was a girl I went to high school with who was diagnosed with ADHD. She was consistently more hyperactive after taking her medication, which tells me that... Something wasn't quite right with that.

This is one of these things that has changed over time; It's been acknowledged since some time in the 60s (as "hyperkinetic impulse disorder"), but didn't really get much attention until the 90s....And what really didn't help is that common ADHD medications (like Ritalin) were later found to "improve inhibitory control" even in normal adults, so there was easily a lot of misdiagnosing going on after seeing the drugs do what they were expected to do.

It also doesn't help that "attention deficit" and "hyperactivity" are simply the most visible symptoms, despite being in the name...."My brain handles 'motivation' abnormally" is hard enough to describe, much less observe.

[Rogar Demonblud]

That's a common misconception, while simple sugars are a decent source of quick energy they don't actually make you "hyper" even as a kid unless you're already prone to hyperactivity.

You'll notice I didn't include an H in that abbreviation. Straight ADD back then, which you get with a constant cycle of sugar rush and sugar crash. And the sugar causes underhydration, which also leads to an inability to focus.

[Anonymouswizard]

I've been considering getting back into the Yu-Gi-Oh card game. I used to run a fairly basic Warrior deck against my friends with all the cards I managed to nab, got teased for using weak monsters, and then never bothered to get any other cards because my deck was powerful enough to give me a decent win rate. Because XYZ monsters were the new thing my deck was built to make getting two level 4 monsters on the field to summon Utopia as painlessly as possible.

[Rater202]

I've been considering getting back into the Yu-Gi-Oh card game. I used to run a fairly basic Warrior deck against my friends with all the cards I managed to nab, got teased for using weak monsters, and then never bothered to get any other cards because my deck was powerful enough to give me a decent win rate. Because XYZ monsters were the new thing my deck was built to make getting two level 4 monsters on the field to summon Utopia as painlessly as possible.

I've run a couple of different decks over the years, though I've lost a good chunk of cards for various reasons.

I've still got a deck based on summoning and powering up Red-Eyes Darkness Dragon but it's way out of date and honestly, it's just a starter deck that I customized slightly.

And apparently several of the cards it came with have since been added to the banned list.

[Anonymouswizard]

I've run a couple of different decks over the years, though I've lost a good chunk of cards for various reasons.

I've still got a deck based on summoning and powering up Red-Eyes Darkness Dragon but it's way out of date and honestly, it's just a starter deck that I customized slightly.

And apparently several of the cards it came with have since been added to the banned list.

The banned list is harder to understand than manga Yami's height.

Like I've heard that he's meant to be the same height as Yugi in the manga, and certainly a lot of the reason that he appears taller is that he has significantly better posture, but I'm fairly certain that in at least some panels he gains several centimetres just by having longer legs than Yugi. At this point I've mostly just chalked out up to artistic licence.

And honestly, at this point out would be mainly customising a starter deck in case any of the friends I'm still in context with decide to play. I'm not skilled enough at deck building to rock sealed type tournaments, and I don't have the resources to build a deck for constructed ones.

Although I do miss the Magic drafting days of my teens, massive I should just build that green/blue deck I've been planning... (It's basically a case of stuffing a lot of mana generation and card draws into one deck to try and rush out powerful monsters, it's still in the very early planning stages.)

[Rater202]

The banned list is harder to understand than manga Yami's height.

The Anime and Manga so very much encouraged creative ways of winning and there are all kinds of cards that add different win conditions to the game.

Off the top of my head, there was Yugi's duel against the Mime that Marrik was puppeting where he turned Marrick's infinite cards/draw when a monster is destroyed/Auto-Attack when a monster is special summoned against him to mill Marrik's deck to the point where he had no cards left in his deck and lost by default.

The Banned list seems to exist solely to forbid any strategy that isn't some variation of "attack the other guy's monsters/life points until they run out" and they also limit the ways to do it.

Also, gonna be honest, when they put a hard limit on how many cards you could have in the special deck when they introduced Syncro-Summoning it kind of turned me off.

It basically destroyed any build based on the HERO archetypes. The Elemental and Evil HERO's brand is about having a fusion for any situation and that's ard to do when there's a hard limit on how many fusion monster cards you can have at hand.

[Lord Raziere]

The Banned list seems to exist solely to forbid any strategy that isn't some variation of "attack the other guy's monsters/life points until they run out" and they also limit the ways to do it.

So.....the exact opposite of how a card game should function?

the entire point of card games is to create metas with more interactions than you can possibly predict so that you can come up with creative ways to win. then when the meta gets stagnant, you rotate the set so that old interactions don't work anymore and new interactions can blossom. this creates constant interest and engagement as people have to learn the new meta.

my brother was right to get me into things like Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone, that sucks.

[BisectedBrioche]

Well, it's happened! I'm in my hospital bed recovering from my GCS!

[Form]

Well, it's happened! I'm in my hospital bed recovering from my GCS!

Then I believe congratulations are in order! Here's to a speedy recovery and hopefully the rest of the process/path forward is without problems and/or complications.

[LaZodiac]

Well, it's happened! I'm in my hospital bed recovering from my GCS!

Congrats! I was recently confirmed for mine (to a degree, still need one more for bottom I believe) so I'm catching up!

[Anonymouswizard]

The Anime and Manga so very much encouraged creative ways of winning and there are all kinds of cards that add different win conditions to the game.

Off the top of my head, there was Yugi's duel against the Mime that Marrik was puppeting where he turned Marrick's infinite cards/draw when a monster is destroyed/Auto-Attack when a monster is special summoned against him to mill Marrik's deck to the point where he had no cards left in his deck and lost by default.

The Banned list seems to exist solely to forbid any strategy that isn't some variation of "attack the other guy's monsters/life points until they run out" and they also limit the ways to do it.

Also, gonna be honest, when they put a hard limit on how many cards you could have in the special deck when they introduced Syncro-Summoning it kind of turned me off.

It basically destroyed any build based on the HERO archetypes. The Elemental and Evil HERO's brand is about having a fusion for any situation and that's ard to do when there's a hard limit on how many fusion monster cards you can have at hand.

To be fair, the vast majority of anime duels do boil down to 'get the biggest monster and attack the life points', and the various instant win conditions I've heard of tend to be very impractical. Heck, the majority of magic decks I've seen focus on dealing damage in one way or another, the second most common win condition I see tended to be decking out and mill decks were rare.

And even if you only have the one win condition you can still have an engaging meta, you just need a variety of ways to get to said condition.

Didn't know that the extra deck originally had no limit either, fusion monsters make a lot more sense now.

And even if there's only one goal, you can still have an engaging meta

Well, it's happened! I'm in my hospital bed recovering from my GCS!

Hooray! Wishing you a swift recovery, wishing anybody else here waiting a short wait.

[Rater202]

Well, it's happened! I'm in my hospital bed recovering from my GCS!

Congratualtions.

To be fair, the vast majority of anime duels do boil down to 'get the biggest monster and attack the life points', and the various instant win conditions I've heard of tend to be very impractical. Heck, the majority of magic decks I've seen focus on dealing damage in one way or another, the second most common win condition I see tended to be decking out and mill decks were rare.

And even if you only have the one win condition you can still have an engaging meta, you just need a variety of ways to get to said condition.

Didn't know that the extra deck originally had no limit either, fusion monsters make a lot more sense now.

And even if there's only one goal, you can still have an engaging meta.

Yeah, I'm just saying it's kind of annoying when the show the game is based on is full of strategies that you're not allowed to use in the real game.

There are also some cards that are just... You ever see a Card in the anime and it's amazing then you find out the real version sucks in comparison.

At some point, they published a Seal of Orichalcos card with text that gave it an effect identical to the effects in the Anime as some special edition limited time promotion thing, and immediately put it on the banned list.

This Spell Card is impervious to negation, destruction, and removal. Increase the ATK power of all your monsters by 500. You control a back row of monsters that cannot be attacked while a monster is in the front row. Send this card from your hand to the Graveyard to negate and destroy any card. The soul of whichever Duelist loses this Duel is forfeit to the winner.

Though obviously, I don't think that last clause is enforcible without ancient dark magic of some kind.

Later they published a legal version

All monsters you control gain 500 ATK. Once per turn, this card cannot be destroyed by card effects. While you control 2 or more face-up Attack Position monsters, your opponent cannot target your monster(s) with the lowest ATK for an attack. If this card is activated: Destroy all Special Summoned monsters you control. You cannot Special Summon monsters from the Extra Deck. You can only activate "The Seal of Orichalcos" once per Duel.

In comparison... This Card is a trap option for anything that isn't a "normal/tribute summon a beat stick" build.

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah, I'm just saying it's kind of annoying when the show the game is based on is full of strategies that you're not allowed to use in the real game.

There are also some cards that are just... You ever see a Card in the anime and it's amazing then you find out the real version sucks in comparison.

At some point, they published a Seal of Orichalcos card with text that gave it an effect identical to the effects in the Anime as some special edition limited time promotion thing, and immediately put it on the banned list.

It's almost as if an anime doesn't have to worry about game balance (see also: Ash's Pikachu). It's annoying, but it's completely unavoidable.

Also, a lot of strategies in the anime wouldn't work without either insane luck or deck stacking, and the only time the latter is explicitly used the deck is the worst on the show (I don't think Mai put in a single spell card to make drawing her monsters easier). Most of the time we forgive the great draws, because the protagonists generally get shown having a couple of tutrns of duff draws (except Yami, who I believe has deck stacking as one of his magical powers). It takes a while for any kind of deck manipulation cards to show up, and the one time I remember them being used to their full effect was that one Exodia deck.


As a side note, after a lot of hassle I'm finally running a full Eeveeloution team through Pokémon Sun. Just going to need to make sure I go back to the area with a moss stone before my final Eevee evolves, I've already got both Umbreon and Espeon.