Is there anything you're into that no one or basically nobody is into?
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There's an Aztec city building game called Tlatoani. It's in early access, but has enough meat on the bone that it's one of my goto games.
Out of curiosity I checked Steam DB for active player numbers. I have discovered at any given point I am 10% to 25% of the given player base BY MYSELF. I am 1 of 4 people playing this game right now in the world. With the prevalence of the internet I always assume whatever weird bullshit you're into there's at least a thousand people talking about it; making memes outsiders could never comprehend. It's actually novel to fly under the radar for once.
What do you do that doesn't have a community associated with it?
I'm still on Second Life, which is a virtual world social platform. It has ~45,000 given active people on it, which is a piss squirt compared to other online platforms like MMOs and MMORPGs. But, nobody I know are into it save for about 5 people at least.
And I still somehow am bothering with Gaia Online which has even less users, from 1,500 ~ 4,400 on a good day and only know 2 friends on there.
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Crypto, LLMs, and cars.
Yeah they're popular outside of Lemmy, but mentioning that your a fan of any of those things on here is a great way to get your inbox flooded with hate. Everybody on here hates those three things with a burning passion.
Only reason why I still have a reddit account is so that I can talk about these things without getting berated for my hobbies.
All three of those things you've mentioned, are causing a lot of problems right now for people.
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I am pretty sure they are just roles to play for people.
"Okay you'll be the hot step-sister and you'll take the dick of your hot step-father coming in about this time." sort of deal.
It's just roles to get those seeking the content watching.
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My wife discovered "Powerwolf" recently. Not death metal, per say, but I've yet to meet anyone else whose heard of it. Worse still, this lead her down a rabbit hole to Dwarf Metal and the accursed song Diggy Diggy Hole which has bored its way into my brain.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Powerwolf is German Power-Metal and they're not a bad band, I've heard lots of tracks from them. I'm into Sabaton which is another power-metal band who sing about historical subjects and figures. Oden Organ is another power-metal band.
The best part about Wind Rose is all of their songs are based off from Middle-Earth legendarium.
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Death metal. I’m pretty clean cut and tat free so people are really taken aback when I tell them one of my favorite acts is called Cattle Decapitation.
The only positive things I can say about Death and Black metal is that, the instrumentals go hard. It's always the vocals that I can't ever get used to.
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Oh nice! I only got into it a little more than a year ago, but I've seen highlight clips of him.
If you're interested, NHK has replays of current matches in a youtube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwq27hqSiIM&list=PLFEzXnIQVwV9JgQkOMJZM23G8g-wBBWKf
Ah, cool. I'll check some out, thanks!
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I hit a similar wall back in high school but the instrumentation was just too good to stop listening. Now I love harsh vocals
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wrote last edited by [email protected]
They cause problems for me too. But I invest in crypto cause it made me $60K. It saved me from losing everything. FWIW I only invest in proof of stake coins, so I'm not destroying the environment.
I use LLMs mainly because Google is complete trash at providing relevant results compared to 10-20 years ago. At least if you use an AI that cites it's sources, you can filter out the slop from the truth.
And I'm into cars because I am of the opinion that if I'm going to have to drive everywhere anyway due to lacking public transport infrastructure, I might as well do it in a vehicle that is actually fun to drive. Why drive a big ugly 4 door crossover, and make driving even more of a chore than it already is? That's why I like tiny nimble sports cars. If I didn't have to drive everywhere, I wouldn't own a car.
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There's an Aztec city building game called Tlatoani. It's in early access, but has enough meat on the bone that it's one of my goto games.
Out of curiosity I checked Steam DB for active player numbers. I have discovered at any given point I am 10% to 25% of the given player base BY MYSELF. I am 1 of 4 people playing this game right now in the world. With the prevalence of the internet I always assume whatever weird bullshit you're into there's at least a thousand people talking about it; making memes outsiders could never comprehend. It's actually novel to fly under the radar for once.
What do you do that doesn't have a community associated with it?
Theologie studies
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That's cool! Can you recommend any resources on this? I've thought a lot about this sort of thing. I'm guessing semiconductor fabrication requires a lot of complex upstream tasks and isn't the sort of thing that's feasible at home. Would love to be wrong!
"The Book", is a book that uses illustrations to explain how to recreate civilization. Dunno if it is good. That said, you can also try "How Things Work", which explains the workings of many inventions, with many wooly mammoths interspersed throughout.
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How to use game design for education around political and social issues and complexity science
Edit since a few people asked: I don't have good answers for this yet, but some thoughts:
- According to C. This Nguyen, games are the art of agency (in the same was as music is the art of sound). Agency is core to politics and activism, and the antidote to apathy and despair. I think (some kinds of) games can make you think in really interesting ways about how you can approach agency, or how it is taken from you.
- Some excellent examples include Wintergreen and Bloc by Bloc. Basically any storygame can, if you want it to.
- Games are basically a voluntary and temporary acceptance of an arbitrary set of rules, with an arbitrary goal that you strive to overcome. They often include metrics that tell you how well you are doing. To some degree, the same can be said about modern bureaucracies (albeit less voluntary and temporary), where the metrics might be KPIs or money.
- Games can satirise this in educational ways, e.g. this was the purpose of The Landlord's Game (the precursor to monopoly)
- This is another C. Thi Nguyen thing - really worth listening to his podcast episode on the Ezra Klein show.
- Some games show amazing emergent complexity. That is, complexity that isn't due to underlying complexity of the system parts, but emerges as a result of their many interactions, like turbulent eddies, or bird murmurations.
- Go/Baduk is an extreme example of this. 2 rules that have produced 3000 years of culture surrounding one of the most difficult and engaging games I know.
- Tak is another example that's a lot easier to learn (because it doesn't require building up a bank of pattern recognition)
- TTRPGs are also super interesting to me, because narrative is one of the tools that the human brain has developed to help understand complexity. I don't think they exhibit emergent complexity so much, but they bring in a lot of complexity via the players' life experience, and via the setting/world.
- Different game mechanics and story tropes provide different affordances - that is, they allow or encourage some behaviours, and disallow others.
- No one ever forments a revolution in monopoly, right? Why not?
- Affordances is an excellent frame for understanding how agency relates to systems, because all systems have attributes with affordances (and constraints). What are the affordances of a capitalist democracy? I think games are an ideal vehicle for explaining affordances easily.
There are probably plenty more links. I've been playing some of those games for years, but am still relatively new to some e.g. story games. And I'm just starting out looking in to game design..
edit 2: also, a plug for [email protected]
Please tell me more
- According to C. This Nguyen, games are the art of agency (in the same was as music is the art of sound). Agency is core to politics and activism, and the antidote to apathy and despair. I think (some kinds of) games can make you think in really interesting ways about how you can approach agency, or how it is taken from you.
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I bet you also enjoy Technology Connections.
Ohh yeah! Though I do wonder:
Why limit themselves to the guy who is evangelizing (and rightly so!) when he could also hang out with crazy swamp guy HyperspacePirate who not only thinks of the crazy cycles but actually builds some as well? -
My wife discovered "Powerwolf" recently. Not death metal, per say, but I've yet to meet anyone else whose heard of it. Worse still, this lead her down a rabbit hole to Dwarf Metal and the accursed song Diggy Diggy Hole which has bored its way into my brain.
I mean, demons are a girls best friend
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My favorite thing in the whole world is dropping LSD, and listening to obscure music or watching weird shit...
Dude I can't find ANYONE to hang out with me... I wave that flag in every social situation I find myself in. I really thought there would be more people into it.
Well, that or I'm completely unbearable to hang out with. If that's the case I just wish people would tell me.
You should try a festival. You'll find something fun to do and plenty of people go alone.
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Its fine as hobbies if you dont force it on others really. I hate llms but I also hate pop and rap music, as long as im not forced to use it im fine.
Everything shoving llms in my face (that really dont work at all) is the equivalent of a car driving by blaring rap at 110 db. Instant anger.
Im into cars as well, I think lemmy is more hating that we are forced into having to use cars, and assholes who drive unneeded trucks. I dont think anyone on here cares about people who are mechanics or tinkerer. Its more the system that forced us to be reliant on cars.
It's totally understandable why people think AI is slop, the stuff that isn't is unnoticeable. And because most of it is slop. Even the "good" stuff sucks most of the time. But you can get gold out of them there hills. But you gotta mine it. Which means a lot of shoveling dirt. These companies don't give a fuck. They'll feed you dirt happily.
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There's an Aztec city building game called Tlatoani. It's in early access, but has enough meat on the bone that it's one of my goto games.
Out of curiosity I checked Steam DB for active player numbers. I have discovered at any given point I am 10% to 25% of the given player base BY MYSELF. I am 1 of 4 people playing this game right now in the world. With the prevalence of the internet I always assume whatever weird bullshit you're into there's at least a thousand people talking about it; making memes outsiders could never comprehend. It's actually novel to fly under the radar for once.
What do you do that doesn't have a community associated with it?
I like to rescue dogs. I just rescued one last week that I'm taking to get groomed. He's sleeping in his crate right now. It's not ideal, as I live in a small house with two cats, three people, and two dogs. But holy shit is it rewarding. Most of the time they just scamper away, although blessedly it's usually to their home. Every once in a while you get a friend for a while, and someone else gets a friend for life. Dogs are lovely animals, and they exist as they do because of humans. It is our duty to take care of them.
This little guy needs to be housetrained and neutered but then he's off to live a life on the open road as my trucker friend's road companion. Or at least that's the plan!
Idk how to attach pictures on this app so you'll have to imagine a very sweet Yorkshire terrier who only has a few dreads left to snip! When I found him he had a dread that was legit like two feet long. Poor baby.
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There's an Aztec city building game called Tlatoani. It's in early access, but has enough meat on the bone that it's one of my goto games.
Out of curiosity I checked Steam DB for active player numbers. I have discovered at any given point I am 10% to 25% of the given player base BY MYSELF. I am 1 of 4 people playing this game right now in the world. With the prevalence of the internet I always assume whatever weird bullshit you're into there's at least a thousand people talking about it; making memes outsiders could never comprehend. It's actually novel to fly under the radar for once.
What do you do that doesn't have a community associated with it?
I don't know anyone else who likes horror films.
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How to use game design for education around political and social issues and complexity science
Edit since a few people asked: I don't have good answers for this yet, but some thoughts:
- According to C. This Nguyen, games are the art of agency (in the same was as music is the art of sound). Agency is core to politics and activism, and the antidote to apathy and despair. I think (some kinds of) games can make you think in really interesting ways about how you can approach agency, or how it is taken from you.
- Some excellent examples include Wintergreen and Bloc by Bloc. Basically any storygame can, if you want it to.
- Games are basically a voluntary and temporary acceptance of an arbitrary set of rules, with an arbitrary goal that you strive to overcome. They often include metrics that tell you how well you are doing. To some degree, the same can be said about modern bureaucracies (albeit less voluntary and temporary), where the metrics might be KPIs or money.
- Games can satirise this in educational ways, e.g. this was the purpose of The Landlord's Game (the precursor to monopoly)
- This is another C. Thi Nguyen thing - really worth listening to his podcast episode on the Ezra Klein show.
- Some games show amazing emergent complexity. That is, complexity that isn't due to underlying complexity of the system parts, but emerges as a result of their many interactions, like turbulent eddies, or bird murmurations.
- Go/Baduk is an extreme example of this. 2 rules that have produced 3000 years of culture surrounding one of the most difficult and engaging games I know.
- Tak is another example that's a lot easier to learn (because it doesn't require building up a bank of pattern recognition)
- TTRPGs are also super interesting to me, because narrative is one of the tools that the human brain has developed to help understand complexity. I don't think they exhibit emergent complexity so much, but they bring in a lot of complexity via the players' life experience, and via the setting/world.
- Different game mechanics and story tropes provide different affordances - that is, they allow or encourage some behaviours, and disallow others.
- No one ever forments a revolution in monopoly, right? Why not?
- Affordances is an excellent frame for understanding how agency relates to systems, because all systems have attributes with affordances (and constraints). What are the affordances of a capitalist democracy? I think games are an ideal vehicle for explaining affordances easily.
There are probably plenty more links. I've been playing some of those games for years, but am still relatively new to some e.g. story games. And I'm just starting out looking in to game design..
edit 2: also, a plug for [email protected]
I want to know more. Part of my job involves teaching lessons on climate change in schools. I have often wondered how I could incorporate games like Minecraft into this.
- According to C. This Nguyen, games are the art of agency (in the same was as music is the art of sound). Agency is core to politics and activism, and the antidote to apathy and despair. I think (some kinds of) games can make you think in really interesting ways about how you can approach agency, or how it is taken from you.
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I’m an avid reader, and I like reading in original language. That has brought me in a variety of rabbit holes, including trying to learn Russian, then Japanese. Unfortunately, I forgot most of it. I also forgot most of my ancient Greek, but my Latin is still vaguely useful. My German and Spanish never reached the “I can read anything” level, that is a shame because I really want to read the Don Quixote and Goethe... But I’m proud to easily read in 3 languages, struggling in 2-3 others (depending how much dictionary use is allowed).
I haven’t been able to find a community of people that like this. Most like a specific culture and go deep into a single language.
I'm currently reading in 3 languages, but a bit more narrowly than you.
When I was a young teen, and reading SF&F books voraciously (sometimes a book a day, or more if I had them), I ran across the Perry Rhodan series.
Finally something I wouldn't run out of! It started in Germany in 1961, and published a novella weekly since. (They haven't missed a week, and are currently past issue 3,000.)
The first 150 or so were translated into English and I scoured used book stores until I had all of them.
Now, 50 years later, I spent a week in Germany and bought issue 3323 in a railway station bookstore. My German was never great, and is now worse, so Google Lens has helped me get through it.
When I came home I did some searching and found all the English translations as e-books. I've read a couple dozen of the early ones and they are pretty dreadful. My 14-year-old self was not very discerning.
I also found e-versions of the German originals up to about #2000, which I could read laboriously, and French translations of the first 1,000.
The latter is a game changer because my French is good enough to read with only occasional dictionary lookups. Reading with Google books allows me to tap as word and see the English instantly, so it's quite convenient.
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The fact that Diggy Diggy Hole exists is such a wonderful thing. It was fun to watch the original, and then various evolutions of it. Its what the internet should be instead of the corporate, pay to play garbage we have ended up with.
Also Powerwolf and Wind Rose are just fun bands to listen to. Metal that doesn't take itself too seriously of great.
Blind Guardian is another good one that makes songs inspired by fantasy. Their Wheel of Time album is pretty great.
