• 18 Posts
  • 171 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: February 15th, 2024

help-circle




  • Wasn’t gaming basically aynonymous with gambling at that time though?

    Yes, in large part, and certainly to the way that the introduction to a book of that era would have been presented to the censors; there would often be a wink and a nod, though: “what a horrible thing to be doing! Now, so you can be completely sure how not to get caught up up in it, here are the complete rules to every game we can think of.” This book is almost entirely consumed with games that were most often used for gambling, though stakes can be set at any level and played for fun at any time.

    I think gaming as a recreation without gambling didnt really come about until the 1940s - 1950s, right? Commonly, of course.

    I’m sure there’s an element of truth in that certain direct modern lineages of trends in non-gambling gaming are sort of post-WW2 phenomena, but overall I don’t think that’s fair. Even just in the narrow sense, Monopoly was released in 1935, and other American board games date back much farther, which at east one scholar referring to the 1880s to the 1920s as a “Golden Age” for board games in the US. Also, certain games, like chess, have always had cultural associations beyond gambling. Children’s board games have also been common forever. Additionally, TTRPGs and Wargames trace back not to gambling, but to military planning and education.

    EDIT: Also of important note, in 1638 the Puritans in the US state of Massachusetts (colonial at the time) enacted a law that made gambling illegal. It outlawed ownership of everything gaming related from dice to cards, and citizens were not allowed to even play in their own home.

    True enough, but there’s an important context that they banned all forms of “idleness,” and gaming got wrapped up in that.




  • While the progress towards making printers user friendly is impressive, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a company whose mandate and path was clearer than Bambu’s.

    From the beginning, they’ve hemmed and hawed about contributing their source code changes required by the licenses of software they’re using, and they have built in the infrastructure that would allow them to “flip switches” to lock users out of functionality when they decide it’s a plausible market strategy (e.g. default cloud connections, tightly integrated website/repository, and RFID “identification” readers with non-generic codes), all while taking VC, charging a premium, and presenting a customer-facing image that emphasizes their similarity to vendors in more mature and locked-down segments. They’re not a walled garden right now, but many those foundations look really solid, LOL.

    I’m not immune to taking the path of least resistance. I have an iPhone, my Xitter account is the only one I’ve actually deactivated, and I use a couple of Windows-only commercial software packages, but I do flatter myself to think I’m clear-eyed about what I’m giving up. Bambu has always been “Enshittification-ready.”




  • wjrii@lemmy.worldtoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldMy lord
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    26 days ago

    I don’t even know if it’s wrong, exactly. I’d have to look up who it was actually named after and try to find some evidence of how they pronounced it, and… meh. Billy Shakes was also prone to mangling “foreign” names to fit his writing, through some combination of general ignorance or IDGAF (must… resist… temptation to launch tirade against the subtle elitism of anti-Stratfordians…).

    It’s just that almost literally everyone in America who ever hears that name hears it from Romeo and Juliet.



  • wjrii@lemmy.worldtoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldMy lord
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    65
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    27 days ago

    Gonna pick this thread to drop some random trivia. A county near mine is named Montague. Being a good little English Lit nerd, upon moving to Texas I proceeded to pronounce it “Mon Tuh Gyoo” (rhymes with “view”), because in Romeo and Juliet that’s the only pronunciation that preserves the meter and rhyme scheme. I was quickly informed that it’s “Mon Tayg” (rhymes with “vague”). This is not insane, but it is very annoying.



  • I want to be more gracious about it, choosing to believe that he is flaky AF and just says whatever is on his mind in the moment, but the motherfucker will absolutely claim that this week’s notion is the eternal truth. Even with Star Wars, it’s 1 movie, 3 movies, 6 movies, nine movies, 12 movies. Pretty sure I’ve seen every single one of those numbers in print. Well okay, maybe not the “1 movie”, though ANH tells a sufficiently self-contained story that you don’t have to fret too much about Vader escaping if the thing tanked. Splinter of the Mind’s Eye was written explicitly to be filmable as a low-budget sequel if the first movie made a small profit, so a franchise was kind of always on the table.

    Then, there are his absolutely garbage takes like his “white slavery” crack or pretending that ANH doesn’t have essential world-building, narrative scene-setting, and introduction of thematic concepts by pushing for a I to VI viewing order. The man always pig-headedly viewed Star Wars as his personal hot rod project car, to be rolled out from time to time for a race or car show, but always brought back home for re-work based on what he had learned about or could now afford. It hasn’t gone as well as I’d hoped, but I still think it was critical he take the big step back that he did.





  • The immediate narrative of “they cut the budget” is not quite true. The budget was done while the city was negotiating with the main union, so they didn’t have exact numbers for additional wages and benefits, and the normal process is to leave them off entirely until the contract is done. That showed cuts on paper. They then finished the deal and ended up with a 6.5% total increase.

    HOWEVER, the broader point is that while the LAPD budget is being augmented to bring on hundreds of new officers and hire civilian support positions, the Fire department’s budget is stagnating, and the budget specifically eliminated 79 civilian support positions and lowered the overtime budget for firefighters. The chief pointed out it’s about the same size as it was 50 years ago. So, she basically took the media moment to get some attention on the need for more resources, and it turned out she was very right.

    The overal LAFD budget after the restored funds is around $895M. For comparison, the police budget got a 7.5% increase in city funding, and its ~$2B city budget is augmented by state and federal funds for about another ~$1.2B. I’m sure the fire department gets something, particularly when a massive emergency actually happens, but I couldn’t find any readily available numbers for any ongoing support from state or federal.

    And just for “funsies,” when Fox News reported on the FD cuts, they compared not to police, but to the city “spending millions on the homeless,” which while true, also reflected a full 26% cut from $250M to $185M. Never change, Fox News. /s