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WELP

 

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The BS Asymmetry Principle

Also known as Brandolini’s Law, this is the simple observation that it’s far easier to produce and spread BS, misinformation and nonsense than it is to refute it.

In fact, the iSchool at University of Washington launched a course on Calling Bullshit with the first class being booked up within one-minute of registration. The professors, Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West have since written a book: Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World.

Phil Williamson in Nature also wrote a nice article emphasizing that we should take the time and effort to correct misinformation where we can. In it, he proposed the idea that “The global scientific community could…set up its own, moderated, rating system for websites that claim to report on science. We could call it the Scientific Honesty and Integrity Tracker, and give online nonsense the SHAIT rating it deserves.”

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I have now locked up the catechism joke market.

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The Black Widow movie keeps getting its release date pushed back, unfortunately.  I'll have to wait a little longer to finally see one of my favorite Marvel villains in live action.   I think his power set can make for some amazing combat sequences, and hopefully the movie will not disappoint in that regard.

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Twin Deceiver by BlackTalonArts

As found at:

https://blacktalonarts.deviantart.com/art/Twin-Deceiver-698576065

Schadenfreude

Ah, that satisfying, superior, at once gleeful and slightly sinful feeling when the aggressive driver that overtook you gets his comeuppance and gets flashed by a speed camera. That feeling is Schadenfreude, a nifty German word made up of schaden for damage, harm or hurt and freude for joy. Taking pleasure in others’ misfortunes.

I hadn’t thought much of it beyond that before reading some excerpts from Tiffany Watt Smith’s book Schadenfreude. She makes the compelling case to examine the moments where we feel superior at another’s expense as a small window into ourselves. A little twinge of joy when a colleague doesn’t get a promotion might reveal your jealousy at their situation, or perhaps a deep down resentment of unfairness. If the person who pushed in front of you in the queue drops their ice cream straight after buying it your secret twinge of joy might be a sense of justice and equity for obeying the rules when they didn’t. Schadenfreude can be a little boost to your own self-esteem.

For a mini-intro try Tiffany Watt Smith’s TED Ideas article: Do you secretly feel good when others stumble? 5 ways to make peace with this very human emotion.

Texts From Superheroes

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Later, she goes maaaaaaaaad.

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If you don't follow gamer drama, lucky you--here's a free dungeon by many of the most well-known authors in Old School gaming, and it's pretty good, too.

Back in February 2020, I visited a library in the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis to see their Dewey-inspired art, and I'm finally taking a moment to share what I saw!

The Anoka County Library has nine branches, one of which was recently renovated and reopened in 2019. The new building of the Centennial branch is bright and airy, with a lot of open space and windows, which made finding a place for artwork a challenge. The library system's executive director, Maggie Snow, was inspired by library art she'd seen in Sweden to purchase artworks from local artists that would be placed on the shelves. Eight pieces were selected to display alongside the library's collection, loosely themed on the Dewey Decimal Classification.

Each of the artworks are accompanied on the shelf by brief artists statements. I'll share three of my favorites.

"Shaman Paddler" by artist Wayne Potratz features a cast metal and stone tribute to the beauty of Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Its location is close to 977.675, the classification for the Boundary Waters.

 

"Garden of Words" by artist Karine Rupp-Stanko features paper blossoms spelling out the word "flower" in the seven most represented languages of Anoka County: Arabic, Dakota, English, Hmong, Russian, Spanish, and Somali. This artwork is located in the language section of the library's collection, the Dewey 400s.

 

Finally, artist Cecilia Schiller's work, "Running Wild," is placed in the technology section of Dewey, the 600s. The finger-operated machinery "expresses in microcosm the interconnectedness of the world." So cool!

Read more about the Anoka County Library art project in this 2019 news article: "Art in the stacks: More than books on the shelves". If your library has Dewey-inspired art, please let us know, we'd love to feature it here on the blog!

One of the thoughts about Succubi that appear sometimes is that a character is a half-Succubus or something similar. Most of the time their succubus nature is hidden away beneath the other part of them. That’s not always, but for the sake of story telling it seems to happen more often than not. For this week’s art a character who is part elf, but delightfully all Succubi in nature…

This work is by the artist Neus-Ku on DeviantArt and you can find the original page here.

I adore the Dungeons & Dragons vibe from this work, but more so, the expression of calm dominance I think tells a lot about her character. She’s not without her power, most likely has many a thrall or similar under her touch.

Lovely character design from her hair, pose, expression and look. She’s every bit the seductive creature she’s meant to be and being that this work just delights me.

 

Tera

Succubus Queen by M1karu

As found at:

http://m1karu.deviantart.com/art/Succubus-Queen-694836388

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Survivorship bias

So the story goes, as told by Stephen Sigler, Nature May 1989:

The US military studied fighter planes returning from missions to try to improve their survival rate and were considering adding heavy armour to those parts of the plane that tended to show the greatest concentration of hits from enemy fire, until statisticians pointed out the fallacy of that argument. The more vulnerable parts of the plane were those with the fewest hits; planes hit there tended not to return at all. The single most vulnerable part, the pilot’s head, was without serious scar in the sample of planes that returned.

It’s easy to draw correlations from what we see in front of us. But what we see usually represents just a small part of what has happened. Focusing on the evidence we can easily see at the expense of that we can’t leads to survivorship bias. To say it another way, when Bill Gates drops out of college and starts Microsoft it might seem like dropping out is a path to success for others too, but that ignores all the dropouts who didn’t create Microsofts and consequently you didn’t hear about.

Silent evidence — the evidence that we don’t or can’t easily choose to consider — is a term from Nicholas Nassim Talleb.

When trying to discover the veracity of the planes story I enjoyed Bill Casselman’s American Mathematical Society article on The Legend of Abraham Wald. The postscript points to some of the source behind the story including a mention of Stephen Sigler’s letter in Nature quoted above.

I covered survivorship bias before but like this story so much I thought it was worth doing again.

I can't remember who wrote it, but there was a blogger post years ago about how every pre-modern weapon developed, from the dart to the bohemian ear-spoon, was developed for a reason. There weren't "good weapons" and "bad weapons"--they had niches they were meant to fill and they did. It's nice because it makes players think about what weapon they're using, and so think about the fight in more detail.

I used this idea a few times--in Demon City, for instance, because it's a game based on horror movies, nearly all weapons, whether a .45 or a flowerpot to the dome, do the same initial damage, but weapons that are better in a given situation vs whatever the other guy has get an advantage to hit.

Somebody recently commissioned me to write a "light and old-school but more tactical" D&D-variant and I used this same idea. The assumption in this game is all weapons do around d6 damage based on the user's class instead of damage by weapon type (in original Warhammer, damage is based on strength) but each has one or more simplified gamey rock-paper-scissors-style feature that make them better in certain situations. So instead of a flail making it easier to get past shields, a flail always ignores shields.

Some notes on these notes:

This game also includes a "block" option, which includes parrying or the like, so in games with no separate parrying step the rule would have to be slightly different.

If a weapon offers a bonus to block I'd usually just translate that into a +1 ac if the user is trained (aka a fighter).

Where it says "bonus" read "+2" in D&Dlike systems.

Cestus: Bonus to hit and damage at hand range (up to arm's length). Minus to both any other time.

Chain: Ignores blocks and shields. Maximum 4 damage. Can be used to grab or grapple.

Club or Mace: Bonus to knock an enemy in heavy armor prone.

Dagger: Throwable. +2 to hit and damage if used in a melee sneak attack. Maximum 4 damage otherwise.

Dart: Bonus to strike at throwing range (30' ish).

Flail: Ignores shields.

Garotte: Can only be used as a surprise or on a grappled enemy. Ignores armor. (Enemy must have a neck.)

Great Axe: +2 damage. -1 to hit.

Greatsword  Can’t be blocked by spears, staffs, pole-arms, can't be used in close-quarters. In a game without a block or parry I'd just make this work like the great axe.

Hand Axe: Throwable.

Heavy pole-arms (halberd, pike, etc): Bonus to damage at spear range (10-12')  An extra block per round at spear range. Can’t be used in close quarters.

Longsword, Shortsword, Scimitar: Bonus to damage and block at sword range.

Net: No damage. A net can be thrown up to 30’ and acts much like a grab on the target’s legs and can be escaped using the same kind of rolls. If the attacker doesn’t hold onto the net (like, they’re killed that round, for example) it can be escaped in one round.

Rapier: Bonus to strike unarmored or leather-equivalent-armor opponents.

Sling: It's basically free and doesn't look like a weapon. Maximum 4 damage but can hit two adjacent opponents at once if you sling a handful of rocks.

Spears and tridents: Throwable. An extra block per round at spear range. Can’t be used in close quarters.

Staff: Doesn’t look like a weapon. An extra block per round at spear range. Maximum 4 damage. Can’t be used in close quarters.

Lance: Bonus to knock a mounted enemy prone. Minus to hit if not mounted.

Warhammer: Bonus to knock a mounted enemy prone.

Whip: Harmless against armor heavier than leather. Maximum 3 damage. Can be used to grab or grapple at a bonus.

For bows: I stuck with the basic D&D idea. The light crossbow is the standard, the shortbow gives you two attacks per round but less damage, the heavy crossbow gives you the most damage but shoots every other round, the longbow gives you more damage than the light crossbow and the best range, but can't be used in close quarters.

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To keep it light, I didn't go nuts with the different kinds of swords (sabres and scimitars supposedly being better from horseback, khopesh swords being better for hooking limbs, etc).


For a non-western game I'd add the shuriken does less damage than a dart but can be thrown twice per round and the indian chakram does less damage but has a better to-hit.

Succubus by jtnyjtny

As found at:

http://jtnyjtny.deviantart.com/art/Succubus-694712302

Perhaps the most common thing I see when looking at what are supposed to be succubish costumes, is that many times the costume is nothing special that’s had a set of horns added to it.

It’s a really cheap way to gain some sales of something that might not be selling well, but it also, at least to me, seems to suggest that there’s a real lack of imagination. It becomes more so when the model doesn’t seem to be all that thrilled with the costume in the first place.

But there is a rather large surprise to anyone that ordered this costume and didn’t read the fine print.

This is called the Red Black Devil Tutu Two Piece Costume which sells for $90 US, but can be found for as little as $35 US at some websites. The costume comes with the bikini top and the tutu.

That’s all it comes with. The horns, pitchfork and stockings are not included and you only find that out if you take the time to read the fine print at the bottom of the page.

So, as a whole, you’d be better off to find a dress and buy a set of horns to go with it than to spend the money on this. It’s quite trashy, it isn’t sexy by any means either.

It’s an example of something that doesn’t come with everything needed, and more so, not coming with a tacky set of horns is… well.. tacky isn’t it?

Zero pitchforks out of five for obvious reasons.

Again, there’s better ideas out there to be found…

 

Tera

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Why don't mad scientists make it so if you cut the wire it always blows up?

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If your reaction is 'but it's easy to count the dots' you might want to check your motherboard.

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