Completely Inconsequential Hot-Takes 2: People Take Too Long to Post New Threads

[DavidSh]

...or that the King in Yellow was definitely a character from Clue, not from a novel, ...

Am I taking the bait, or adding to it, when I point out that "the King in Yellow" was originally from short stories? "The King In Yellow" was a Raymond Chandler story about the fictional murder of bandleader King Leopardi, who first appears (alive) in yellow satin shorts.

Spoiler: Bait?

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Adding to it. The Chandler story was from 1938, while the Robert Chambers collection of stories The King in Yellow appeared in 1898. "The King in Yellow" was a character in a (nonexistent) play of the same name that is mentioned in some of the stories.

[sktarq]

Am I taking the bait, or adding to it, when I point out that "the King in Yellow" was originally from a short story? "The King In Yellow" was a Raymond Chandler story about the fictional murder of bandleader King Leopardi, who first appears (alive) in yellow satin shorts.

Both. What you really need to do is get two PC who are using the characters from different short stories and both of them playing it totally strait and can because the DM made an amalgam.one has Knowledge (ravenloft) vs the other with Knowledge (nobility) but neither has any ranks in other.

[Draconi Redfir]

Am I taking the bait, or adding to it, when I point out that "the King in Yellow" was originally from short stories? "The King In Yellow" was a Raymond Chandler story about the fictional murder of bandleader King Leopardi, who first appears (alive) in yellow satin shorts.

Spoiler: Bait?

Show

Adding to it. The Chandler story was from 1938, while the Robert Chambers collection of stories The King in Yellow appeared in 1898. "The King in Yellow" was a character in a (nonexistent) play of the same name that is mentioned in some of the stories.

isn't the King in Yellow Hastur, the eldritch god of shepherds?

[Rater202]

People: Complain that there arne't enogh actual minority characters in the X-mn, ingoring the literally hunrds of poc, lgbt, disbaled, or neurodiergent mutant characters that already exist.

Marvel: Adds more.

People: Either genre them to keep complaining about how all the mutants are White Upper Class Wasps(there are three of those total and they've all gone through some ****) or bitch that having a real-life minority also be a fictional minority cheapens things or is offensive or something.

So... The X-Men need to be IRL minorities for their being depicted as being a discriminated against minority to be valid... But having real life minorities depicted as mutants is offensive?

And it is the same people saying it.

What really annoys me is when people bring these arguments up in relation of Kamala Khan being retconned into an Inhuman-Mutant hybrid, because none of them ever had a problem with her facing discrimination for being an Inhuman or for being a super in general, only when she gets involved with the X-Men does being a fictional minority cheapen her status as an IRL one.

They also frame Emma Frost warning Kamala that being involved in mutant affairs is a bit intense as "an upper class white woman teaches a PoC about real discrimination" while ignoring that Emma has lived through multiple genocides and watched children that she taught die horribly in terrorist attacks motivated by discrimination.

[Peelee]

Spoiler: Hot take: I object to this on a fundamental level

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[veti]

Spoiler: Hot take: I object to this on a fundamental level

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I would object to that on multiple levels.

I kinda hope you're leaving out some important context (e.g. it's on display in an art gallery, not a shop), but it seems a long shot.

[DavidSh]

It looks like a ridiculously expensive sandwich that has icing like a doughnut. And the ingredients list is kind of malformed, not making clear the hierarchy of ingredients -- ingredients for the cold cuts are above the ingredients for the bread, regardless of the relative amounts, and without any division into explicit sections.

What is the usual price for muffalettas? (Are you in a region that normally even has muffalettas? I don't know how far outside New Orleans they have spread.) I suppose, if this is three times the size of a typical hoagie, the price might be reasonable.

--
A little research shows that this price is not out of line for a name-brand muffuletta, which is typically large enough to serve four. But the topping is still weird.

[tyckspoon]

Spoiler: Hot take: I object to this on a fundamental level

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Kinda looks like what you might get if you asked an AI to make you 'food that represents New Orleans' - it's jammed together the associations with Mardi Gras, a king cake, the mufaletta sandwich.. although if it were AI you might also get like a layer of red beans and rice or gumbo or something in the filling.

.. I think maybe the 'icing' is cheese sauce/melted cheese and the sprinkles might be dyed sesame seeds? I don't see an ingredients listing for icing, just the food dye. It's still pretty horrible to look at but makes a lot more sense as food.

[LaZodiac]

Kinda looks like what you might get if you asked an AI to make you 'food that represents New Orleans' - it's jammed together the associations with Mardi Gras, a king cake, the mufaletta sandwich.. although if it were AI you might also get like a layer of red beans and rice or gumbo or something in the filling.

.. I think maybe the 'icing' is cheese sauce/melted cheese and the sprinkles might be dyed sesame seeds? I don't see an ingredients listing for icing, just the food dye. It's still pretty horrible to look at but makes a lot more sense as food.

Yeah looking closely those are very clearly painted sesame seeds.

[Ionathus]

This one is lighthearted, even by the standards of this thread! But it's on my mind so here it is

I took some career skills assessments yesterday as part of a job application, and the multiple choice assessment was made up of ENTIRELY what I call "health class questions" -- so named because they seemed to be the only style of question in my high school Health & Wellness tests. A Health Class Question can be identified by the following format:

Question: You meet with a new client for the first time and realize that your different communication styles are likely to cause conflict in the future. What's the best response to this situation?
1. Immediately inform the client that you expect problems working with them, then list the problems.
2. Say nothing, hope it gets better.
3. Work to understand the client's viewpoint and put in effort to bridge the communication gap. (ding ding, it's this one, go figure)
4. Punch them in their stupid face before they can say another word.

Basically, multiple choice questions are useless for anything other than assessing your vocabulary or actual fact/knowledge retention, because any situation where human communication/behavior is a factor is impossible to sum up in four realistic-looking options. Either you wind up with 3/4 obviously terrible options, or you wind up with 4 options that are all equally bad depending on the question asker's interpretation. You can't win.

[Peelee]

This one is lighthearted, even by the standards of this thread! But it's on my mind so here it is

I took some career skills assessments yesterday as part of a job application, and the multiple choice assessment was made up of ENTIRELY what I call "health class questions" -- so named because they seemed to be the only style of question in my high school Health & Wellness tests. A Health Class Question can be identified by the following format:



Basically, multiple choice questions are useless for anything other than assessing your vocabulary or actual fact/knowledge retention, because any situation where human communication/behavior is a factor is impossible to sum up in four realistic-looking options. Either you wind up with 3/4 obviously terrible options, or you wind up with 4 options that are all equally bad depending on the question asker's interpretation. You can't win.

Sure, but that's not a great example. The clear solution is obviously number 4, which anyone would have said verbatim even in short answer form.

[NichG]

This one is lighthearted, even by the standards of this thread! But it's on my mind so here it is

I took some career skills assessments yesterday as part of a job application, and the multiple choice assessment was made up of ENTIRELY what I call "health class questions" -- so named because they seemed to be the only style of question in my high school Health & Wellness tests. A Health Class Question can be identified by the following format:

Basically, multiple choice questions are useless for anything other than assessing your vocabulary or actual fact/knowledge retention, because any situation where human communication/behavior is a factor is impossible to sum up in four realistic-looking options. Either you wind up with 3/4 obviously terrible options, or you wind up with 4 options that are all equally bad depending on the question asker's interpretation. You can't win.

Feels like a personality test rather than an actual question about skills. E.g. 'will the applicant stubbornly ignore an easy gimme?' or 'how well will the applicant tolerate condescending micromanagement in the future?'. Then there's also the sorts of questions which are like 'I can't believe anyone would get this wrong but somehow like 50% of applicants get weeded out by it' - stuff like 'okay, you need to show us you can open a file from the harddrive in MS Word' or 'you're applying for a C++ programming job, can you demonstrate Hello World?'. Not a fan of either, though.

[Ionathus]

Feels like a personality test rather than an actual question about skills. E.g. 'will the applicant stubbornly ignore an easy gimme?' or 'how well will the applicant tolerate condescending micromanagement in the future?'. Then there's also the sorts of questions which are like 'I can't believe anyone would get this wrong but somehow like 50% of applicants get weeded out by it' - stuff like 'okay, you need to show us you can open a file from the harddrive in MS Word' or 'you're applying for a C++ programming job, can you demonstrate Hello World?'. Not a fan of either, though.

That’s fair, it could easily be a low bar to filter out the bare minimum.

At least on the personality/patience test front, though…the test was an online assessment. So no chance of measuring the candidate’s emotional/social reactions.

[Bohandas]

Those personality tests always gave me a creepy late-20th-century-cult sort of vibe

[Ionathus]

Those personality tests always gave me a creepy late-20th-century-cult sort of vibe

It was definitely a "job & interpersonal communication skills test, there is only one right answer" situation. To me the sign of a personality test is that all options sound like semi-reasonable courses of action and whichever one you pick just gives you some variety of "points" for a certain personality type. In this case, there was definitely only one right answer. The answer was just either painfully obvious or totally subjective.

[Peelee]

It was definitely a "job & interpersonal communication skills test, there is only one right answer" situation. To me the sign of a personality test is that all options sound like semi-reasonable courses of action and whichever one you pick just gives you some variety of "points" for a certain personality type. In this case, there was definitely only one right answer. The answer was just either painfully obvious or totally subjective.

Imean, real talk for a second, that just means they want someone who, for painfully obvious questions, isnt incompetent, and for totally subjective questions, thinks the way they want.

[veti]

It's taken me a few decades, but I've figured out what's really wrong with modern music.

By "modern" in this context I don't mean whatever da kidz are doing these days. Pop is its own thing, I gave up years ago on trying to keep track of its subgenres and fads. As far as I know it's the same as it always was, which is to say about 90% crap, 9% worth hearing, 1% gold. I'm talking about both what passes for "classical" music these days, and the specific kinds of pop and rock that get used in game soundtracks.

My teenaged son has spent the past three weeks, pretty much continuously, playing Persona 5, so I've heard a lot of that soundtrack. It struck me that it's superbly crafted to disguise the fact that time is passing. The same songs keep playing over and over, as soundtracks to battles and whatever, but they never finish. Ever. So, my brain thinks, it can't have been more than about four minutes since it started, because it's clearly that kind of song. Then I look at a clock, and six hours have gone by.

And on the car radio just now, I was hearing what I think was introduced as "theme from Downton Abbey". I've never watched it, so it meant nothing to me, but the music... just kind of rambled on. And on, and on. Without any sense of ever building anything or going anywhere.

Even most of the famous film soundtracks suffer from this anticlimactic disease. Think Star Wars - the music sometimes sounds exciting, sure, but then it fades back and nothing's changed. It never develops. It's not music that's interested in thought or feelings or telling a story or building a scene; its sole purpose is to be there, to fill up one of the audience's senses and protect them from thinking about anything.

I don't even hate it. How could I hate something so bland? - it'd be like hating grass. What I do hate is its omnipresence in media. Here's a thought: when you've got nothing much to say, don't f'ing say it. We don't need every moment to be underlined by music. Watching some old movies and shows, you'll sometimes see whole scenes with no background music at all. It was reserved for when it actually had something to do. Whatever happened to that?

[Rynjin]

IMy teenaged son has spent the past three weeks, pretty much continuously, playing Persona 5, so I've heard a lot of that soundtrack. It struck me that it's superbly crafted to disguise the fact that time is passing. The same songs keep playing over and over, as soundtracks to battles and whatever, but they never finish. Ever. So, my brain thinks, it can't have been more than about four minutes since it started, because it's clearly that kind of song. Then I look at a clock, and six hours have gone by.

That's not...a "modern music" thing though, that's background music. That is what it is specifically designed to do because it is going to play through the whole game.

Game music is much different from movie soundtracks. You're going to be there, longer, listening to the same sounds, longer. That's the nature of the beast.

Try playing a game with the soundtrack turned off but other sounds left intact. It is eerie and off-putting.

[veti]

That's not...a "modern music" thing though, that's background music. That is what it is specifically designed to do because it is going to play through the whole game.

Game music is much different from movie soundtracks. You're going to be there, longer, listening to the same sounds, longer. That's the nature of the beast.

Try playing a game with the soundtrack turned off but other sounds left intact. It is eerie and off-putting.

But the soundtracks have spread their influence beyond their sphere of origin. Yes, game music is different from movie soundtracks, but they both suffer from the same kind of ossification, the same allergy to form and meaning. And people hear this kind of music - a lot - and can't help but be influenced by it.

Games without music - well, for the games I play, they're far better that way. I turned the music off in Skyrim years ago, and never regretted it for a second. Minecraft ditto.

[TurboGhast]

That's not...a "modern music" thing though, that's background music. That is what it is specifically designed to do because it is going to play through the whole game.

Game music is much different from movie soundtracks. You're going to be there, longer, listening to the same sounds, longer. That's the nature of the beast.

Try playing a game with the soundtrack turned off but other sounds left intact. It is eerie and off-putting.

To agree with you, when a game wants to change what mood its soundtrack is producing, it'll (usually) change what song is playing; the most obvious example being a stage or battle theme ending when you win so a victory theme can play.

Versions of video game songs seen on OSTs, music disks, and similar places often have endings added to them because the new format makes them necessary where they weren't before.

[Ionathus]

I saw somebody complaining about running out of NPC dialogue in Hades (video game) on Reddit today and I just can't get that out of my head.

For context, Hades has over 20,000 lines of voiced dialogue, much of it intricately contextual: there are lines that a character will only say if you're carrying a certain weapon (out of 6 choices), have a certain keepsake (20+ choices), use a certain special ability, have already purchased a cosmetic upgrade for the lounge...the list is staggering. It's the most "alive" feeling world in any game I've ever played, thanks to how the characters still have fresh banter even after 100 hours played. So few games can boast that.

I can understand the person on Reddit complaining that they feel spoiled now, or making an appreciation post for how vibrant the game's dialogue felt. But their tone definitely felt like legitimate complaining at times, as if Supergiant somehow fell short or "owed" the players more dialogue, which has never been less true in my book. The poster even responded positively to somebody proposing a ChatGPT-esque mod which would use generative AI to add lines to the game. And that really cooked my goose. Generative AI writing has a ton of uses, but trying to apply it to a lovingly crafted story like that feels...wrong.

Imean, real talk for a second, that just means they want someone who, for painfully obvious questions, isnt incompetent, and for totally subjective questions, thinks the way they want.

Yeah, the first part I totally get. I have so much experience with multiple-choice stuff like this (including a rich bar trivia career, a childhood in the American public school system, and a lot of Bioware-style RPGs) that I have a lot of testing instincts that help me make educated guesses or spot the "obvious" choice. And I guess it does its job of filtering for candidates who can't pass a low reading comprehension bar. Tedious, but understandable.

The latter "thinks the way they want" part I still disagree with though. Those subjective questions were so poorly worded that I don't think you can even use a certain response as diagnostic -- it feels so arbitrary as to be random noise. You won't even get the groupthinkers you want.

Back in my day, we used in-person conversations to judge people for their lack of conformity, consarn it!!

[veti]

Back in my day, we used in-person conversations to judge people for their lack of conformity, consarn it!!

Yeah, but that's about two orders of magnitude more expensive. You can screen 100 applicants with a Web form, as easily and cheaply as setting up a single in-person interview. Even if the interview also happens online.

[Ionathus]

Yeah, but that's about two orders of magnitude more expensive. You can screen 100 applicants with a Web form, as easily and cheaply as setting up a single in-person interview. Even if the interview also happens online.

Which is just such a pity, because I'm not nearly as good in virtual interviews as I am in in-person ones. My mind control gaze suffers some kind of dilution effect in the digital transfer -- so annoying.

[DKArthas]

Hot take: TV and Movies were a mistake and we should all retvrn to books and reading. The former have made young people lazy, destroyed their reading comprehension and ability to think for themselves!

[enderlord99]

Hot take: TV and Movies were a mistake and we should all retvrn to books and reading. The former have made young people lazy, destroyed their reading comprehension and ability to think for themselves!

...You say on the internet, which is an even newer form of media than television.

[DKArthas]

...You say on the internet, which is an even newer form of media than television.

Yes. Social Media and youtube is bad but internet has also allowed easier access to information. People can read books online, get access to news and debate on issues in a text format! There are good and bad sides to advancements jim.

[Peelee]

Hot take: TV and Movies were a mistake and we should all retvrn to books and reading. The former have made young people lazy, destroyed their reading comprehension and ability to think for themselves!

Unless you're nearing a hundred years old, I've got some bad news for you.

[Ionathus]

Unless you're nearing a hundred years old, I've got some bad news for you.

Psh, everyone knows film was invented in the late 70s. Everything published “before” that is a backdated conspiracy.

On the plus side, this means the Apollo program predates the silent film era, which allows for the possibility that A Trip To The Moon was filmed on the actual moon.

[Rynjin]

Hot take: TV and Movies were a mistake and we should all retvrn to books and reading. The former have made young people lazy, destroyed their reading comprehension and ability to think for themselves!

This is certainly a take but "hot" isn't the adjective I'd use to describe it.

[Bohandas]

Cellphones should operate exclusively in landscape mode