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Cake day: August 12th, 2025

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  • I think the main difference between original trilogy and KOTOR series would be whether or not the Force has a will - original series treats the Force extremely closely to the concept of Tao (Lucas being a methodist buddhist), without any particular ‘agenda’

    KOTOR2, especially Kreia, treats the Force more sapiently, and as something that can be killed - which seems to contradict Obi-Wan’s original description of it in a New Hope (if the Force is created by living things and binds the universe together, then surely you could only “destroy” the force if the universe and living things in it are gone).

    OTOH, you could easily say that Kreia is unreliable, which would make this interpretation simply Kreia’s perspective, rather than KOTOR2 trying to adjust canon. Or you could also say that Obi-Wan is simplifying things greatly since he doesn’t have much time, and he isn’t exactly truthful about other things, either. (And it’s been a few years since I played the KOTOR games so I could be misremembering)

    It’s also fair to say that George Lucas doesn’t always follow George Lucas’ original vision… (i.e., midichlorians, which certainly depart from original buddhist inspirations). Personally, taking the “original vision” and cleaving to whatever was made first isn’t important to me, so long as you can tell a good story I don’t mind what retcons/worldbuilding changes happen.



  • I think DS9 works if you consider it more as a “show about star trek” rather than just as “star trek”. E.g., it’s a good deconstruction of what is “necessary” for a utopia, or for looking at the limits of how a utopia van operate in practice.

    DS9’s characters and their dynamics are my favorite amongst any star trek show, but I think it’s fair to say that the show does not stick to the core world building “pillars” of star trek. However, I think it would be unfair to dismiss it as simply edgy for the sake of edginess.

    (Similar to KOTOR and star wars - really cool how the game turns the idea of the Force on its head, but definitely not in line with George Lucas’ vision. I would still want to see a movie about this anyways)




  • Ghibli might be a more interesting case study - Miyazaki repeatedly said that he did not write his stories with an audience in mind besides himself, but his movies quite clearly have universal appeal. His stories are quite clearly grounded in his own culture, but they touch on universal human experiences.

    However, there are definitely stories with a specific audience in mind that do not have universal appeal (e.g., Transformers smut fanfic) though generally authors are aware of this.

    I think there are also folks who write stories with an idea in mind of universal appeal, but do not understand themselves enough to actually do so - things they take for granted as “common sense” may not actually be human universals. Or, because they fail to say anything at all in their work, it ends up fading into the background. (I don’t believe in sociopolitically “neutral” works, we are all shaped by our beliefs and cultures).

    These works aren’t necessarily bad, either- I think Andy Weir has said a few times in interviews that his works aren’t meant to be “political”, but the two that I’ve read (The Martian, Project Hail Mary) are both a sort of “sci fi optimism” about people from different nations coming together to solve a problem. That may be “common sense” to some people, but it is certainly NOT a universal (even if I do share the outlook that people of Earth should work together to help each other regardless of national boundaries).



  • There is a significant overlap between people who believe in food stamps/free school lunch/etc. and people who are vegan or vegetarian.

    Have you considered helping out with or starting a “food not bombs” in your area? From their site:

    Our food is vegan or vegetarian and free to anyone without restriction, rich or poor, stoned or sober. First, the potential for problems with food spoilage are greatly reduced when dealing strictly with plant based foods. Second, we want our food to reflect our dedication to nonviolence and that included violence against all beings including animals. We only prepare food which is strictly from plant sources so people will always know and trust Food Not Bombs that our food is safe and nonviolent. At times, we do get donations of dairy and meat products which might and redirect it to soup kitchens that aren’t vegetarian because we believe eating is more important than being politically pure; however, we NEVER cook with animal products ourselves and only share breads that might have dairy when it is not possible to know for sure.


  • The article is 5 paragraphs long. Is it really that hard to read it and answer your question? Nevermind, I think I misread your comment. Sorry!

    What Sony is specifically trying to do is see if any AI song can be traced to specific songs- e.g., if someone prompted “make me a song in the style of Lady Gaga”, would Sony be able to conclusively determine this based on the outputting song?

    I am a bit skeptical of this working, but then again, there were some image generators spitting out gettysburg watermarks.






  • I’m torn on this - Christianity (particularly evangelical christianity) has had an extremely negative effect on democracy in our country and has caused physical harm to others.

    However, I think most people with a conscience subscribe to some form of philosophy or religion (even if atheists aren’t “loyal” to any particular perspective and may not even use titles/categories to describe their value system) and I think it’s fine for your morals/conscience to influence decision making. Even a purely scientific decision making process could be considered a form of philosophy.

    That being said, most organized religion is about obedience to the tenets of said religion, not a method of asking questions about the world to try to find the most just way to proceed.




  • I’m not going to fault you for that - but do you think you should receive an award for the work you didn’t do? Even if you only use the car on the “easy” parts of the race that nobody cares about?

    In the case of this particular game, perhaps the bulk of the creative work was done by humans. But if the GOTY committee isn’t confident with drawing a line between what work is OK to offload onto an AI and what work isn’t, then I think it’s fair for then to say this year that any generative AI use is a disqualifier.

    You and I can say with ease that an implementation of a basic swap function (c=a, a=b, b=c) doesn’t require any creative work and has been done to death, so there’s no shame in copypasteing something from stackoverflow or chatgpt into your own code to save time.

    But it’s harder to gauge that for more complex things. Especially with art - where would you draw the line? Reference material? Concept art? Background textures or 3d models of basic props (random objects in the scene like chairs, trees, etc)?

    I don’t think there’s a clear answer for that. You might have an answer you think is correct, and I might have one as well, but I think it will be difficult and time consuming to achieve consensus in the game development community.

    So, the most efficient answer for now is to have any generative AI be a disqualifier.


  • I don’t see the point in boycotting something that’s free and doesn’t make money off of selling my data. I suppose you aren’t obligated to donate to it, but that was already true.

    I suppose OTOH, I’m not pro-tankie, but I at least prefer tankies to the fascists and authoritarian capitalists (or whatever you want to call them) that run mainstream media. Harm reduction is the name of the game IMO, not finding a platform with a perfect set of political values aligning with yours (at least for me, I haven’t run into many leftists who are also committed to nonviolence due to pragmatic reasons). The russia/ukraine stuff in that thread you link does look nasty, on the other other hand