Elmkast @Elmkast@refactorcamp.org
uni student
@Elmkast on twitter for memes and normie stuff
Hello new site I don't understand! I'm currently studying Urban Planning at ConU in Montreal but grew up in hardcore red/trump land. Been following Ribbonfarm since November. Every Cradle a Grave and Tempo were some of my favorite reads of the past few years.
Interested in urban planning, making electronic music, video game design, and trying to get maximum life satisfaction out of a baseline level of laziness.
@Elmkast @msweet ha I remember playing Skyrim and I couldn't carry all my stuff ( too much weight), so I started going through my inventory and getting rid of everything that I didn't need. And then I looked over at my closet and realized that I was willing to spend 10 minutes throwing away things I didn't need in a video game, but not willing to spend 10 minutes doing the same for my closet. That's a real world application for me.
@Elmkast I suspect it has to do with a skewed distribution of risk and reward. I used to play a tonne, and sometimes consider re-taking it as a past time, but then I get struck by the following thought process: https://swellandcut.com/2018/04/29/the-emptiness-of-videogames/
@Elmkast I think the desire for closed world / fixed rules is an offshoot of the need to feel accomplished and the feeling of having successes when much of the real world is not built around meaningful behavior. A tractable system is easier to achieve success within, and so the emotional relief is availible.
A more pure (minimal?) version of this is people who play solitaire - its a simple game with lots of little wins even if you don't win the hand, and the rules are easy to master.
@Elmkast I've put this theory into operation by finding and watching other people play and learn new games - I can experience the sense of accomplishment by proxy without having to spend hour actually learning the game myself (or paying for the game and computer that I can't afford).
Its useful for me because I pretend to be a game developer. But a lot of the time its just to feel that therapeutic effect when most of my life feels like I'm useless and my goals intractable.
Wonder how much the therapeutic effect of video games (for many people including myself) stems from a desire for a closed world with fixed rules.
The segregated community aspect of Mastodon instances is interesting, but it still just feels like a Twitter fork that has a line of defense against corporate brands and blue checks.
at what level of self-description are you most interesting?
@Elmkast I think the former group treat it as a kind of logistics video game, i.e. that IS how they relax
Spent some time today exploring NASA’s photo collections. Pics from the Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn were particularly awesome to me.
The shadows created between the planet, moons, and rings bring a sense of dimension to the pictures that I don’t often feel with astrophotography.
checking Mastodon
There are people who do deep dives into countries they visit, and the added difficulty leads to a greater sense of immersion/distance. I respect that. But maybe most of us should treat international travel less like a Quest and more an opportunity to R E L A X
being a tourist is underrated. Get drunk, eat an above average meal, learn some history (that you will immediately forget) and see some cool views. You now have something to make small talk about for the next month and your instagram got an upgrade.
Or, go live in fake poverty for a while in India. We all know your newfound humility is bullshit!
uspol Show more
Currently learning about the Third Reich. Hearing all this stuff about the US progression along the road to Nazidom, and seeing people’s denials and other people’s pleas for action. It makes me realise how hard it must have been in the 1930s to
1) figure out what was actually happening
and
2) figure out WTF to do about it.
Don’t think I’ll be making the mistake again of writing the people who lived in that period off as morally inferior because they “allowed” the rise of Hitler + the Nazis.
Would love a brainstorming app that allows me to give separate ideas/notes some kind of proximity without actually drawing a direct connection or putting them into a category. Like a soft link, that suggest possible correlation or relevance.
The classical solution here is just using a physical notepad, but I've been having too many ideas while walking/driving recently for that.
A poem, in other words, is an artifact whose value is a strong function of the prevailing mass consciousness. Under some conditions, it might easily travel and find its audience. Under worst-case conditions, it might cause the poet to be executed for heresy because the first person to hear it reports it to an inquisitor.
Now consider the question: what does it take for a poem to be optimally valued in a cultural market?
Maybe not often have, but can and do have
Maybe in the deep south? But I haven't spent much time there, and in Texas people with strong accents often have a ton of multi generational wealth
The weirdest part about the UK is being able to know someone's socioeconomic class after just three or four words. Don't think I can do that with any accuracy in the US.
