The Apartheid Manchild has this weird obsession with Mars.

There will be no permanent settlement on Mars in the next decade. (I frankly doubt that there will even have been human footprints on Mars in the next decade!) There will be no permanent settlement on Mars in the next century. There will likely be no permanent settlement on Mars in the next millennium. And I’m saying that last one not because I don’t think we’d have the technology in a thousand years, but rather because there is no point in living on Mars.

Mars has nothing we need that’s worth maintaining a settlement in the face of conditions harsher than the absolute worst the Earth has to offer. If people want to live in a permanently cold shithole with nothing usefully accessible they can just build a house on Antarctica. It’s a far cheaper way to fuck around and find otu.

Read George Polti’s The 36 Dramatic Situations. It’s a list of plot elements that have a snappy title, a list of participants in the plot element, a brief discussion of how it works, and then (unfortunately dated) references to dramas that used them.

Using this when building a world, or a campaign, or a local setting, lets you quickly set up a bunch of conflicts (ideally with interlaced participants so that single NPCs (or PCs) can be in different roles in different dramatic situations. Then you just let the events flow logically, and as the dramatic situations get resolved you get a plot. PCs can interfere with these dramatic situations and thus have an impact on resulting plots even if the overall setting is far larger than they are.

For depth in world-building I use a rule I call “Y-cubed”. (I got it from somewhere else but can’t recall the source anymore.)

For every detail you make, you ask the question “Why” three times.

So a village the characters have reached stop all work every 77 days for a festival. Why? It celebrates an ascended local hero who saved the village from a magical blight. Why 77 days? It took 77 days for effort for the blight to be defeated. … And so on.

This is a rapid way to both build depth in your setting quickly, as well as inspire possible mysteries and intrigue for investigation later.

A slight modification works also for giving NPCs depth.

Anybody who thinks that the Apartheid Manchild was ever intending on reducing spending needs to be given a dunce hat and forced to sit in the corner.

Robert’s cynicism is cracking these days soon. His laughter is increasingly forced and joyless.

These are shit times.

I am not sure what you mean by saying the CPC isn’t Communist anymore.

The CPC has never been communist.

It’s socialist.

The number drops a bit when the polls are done in secrecy. Still far higher than any western government, mind.

To clarify for any pseudo intellectual who happens to be reading:

“<X> is true for <reason> you utter idiot” is not an example of the ad hominem fallacy.

“<X> is true because you’re an utter idiot” is an example of the ad hominem fallacy.

Glad to be of service.

Have you considered taking a communications course so you don’t sound like a pretentious, obfuscating jackass?

Eschew gratuitous obfuscation. (See what I mean?)

In AI alone, we lead the world.

*Deep Seek has entered the chat.*

Would this be the military that could only reach a standstill in Korea? That lost in Vietnam? That lost in Afghanistan? That ran away scared from Mogadishu? That “won” in Iraq by generating the world’s largest collection of terrorists until the blowback lost you two large towers and a smaller one?

That military?

At work? My go-to activity is to get the Hell out of the toilet as quickly as possible.

I hate squat toilets, see.

You’ll find that happens a lot when Americans comment on things abroad. Victims if their own educational system that they are, they really don’t know anything about the world outside of their borders so they just make vague pronouncements and nod as if they’ve said something wise instead of having just shit their own pants for all to see.

From above:

A large portion of Americans only have 2 brain cells and they’re both busy fighting for 3rd place.

And here we have a case in point: an American who can’t read history.

I’ve been listening to Tanya Tagaq’s Retribution album this morning. She’s by far the best Inuk-punk performer in the world, no exceptions. (I say this with confidence because she’s the only Inuk-punk performer in the world. 🤭)

Simon Whistler is a presenter and it often shows. He’s pretty entertaining, and he has the look of a scholar which gives him some gravitas and credibility when he talks, but he isn’t particularly knowledgeable of anything (including topics he’s already covered in one channel when presenting the same topic on another).

So of course he thinks ChatGPT is smart.

China? You mean that place that blocks Xhitter?

I’m not a Xhitter user so I have no idea what “Subscriptions” even means. How is it different from “Followers”?

Hmmm… Maybe some of those ultra-sticky PVC stickers then. Those can go on fast and are a real bitch to remove.

In general there is no “neutral” source of information. At all. Yes, including Wikipedia with its “NPOV” policy. (It even says that there’s no such thing in its own policies, so I’m not exactly saying anything new here.) Most of the sources you cite as “neutral” will actually be sources that agree, broadly, with your own cultural assumptions that you are likely not even aware of, not to mention actively questioning.

That being said, since there is no such thing as a neutral source of information, you can still have good sources of information. Wikipedia is one such. Is it perfect? No. Because nothing is. But it is good enough for most general knowledge. It gets a bit dicey as a source when you leave the realm of western assumptions, or if you enter into the realm of contentious politics. But for most things it’s just fine as a quick resource to get information from. It’s a decent encyclopedia whose ease of access isn’t matched by anybody else.

Reddit is not, however. Because reddit has no disciplined approach to information-gathering and -sharing. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia (with all the strengths and flaws that form takes on). Reddit is a lot of people talking loudly in a gigantic garden party from Hell. Over by the roses you have a bunch of people loudly expounding on the virtues of the Nazi party. Over by the fountain you’ve got another group loudly expounding on how vile and gross the Nazis were casting glares in the direction of the roses. In the maze park you’ve got a bunch of people meandering around and laughing while they babble inanities. Out in the driveway you’ve got a bunch of Morris dancers practising their craft. It may be fun if you like that kind of thing, but it is absolutely not a source of reliable information unless you do so much fact checking that you might as well skip the reddit step and go straight to getting the facts from the places you’re using to check.

ChatGPT, to continue using strained analogies, is that weird uncle in your family. He’s personable, bright, cheerful, and seems to know a lot of stuff. But he’s a bit off and off-putting somehow, and that’s because behind the scenes, when nobody’s looking, he’s taking a lot of hallucinogens. He does know a lot. A whole lot. But he also makes shit up from the weird distortions the drugs in his system impose on his perceptions. As a result you never know when he’s telling the truth or when he’s made a whole fantasy world to answer your question.

My personal experience with ChatGPT came from asking it about a singer I admire. She’s not a really big name and not a lot of people write about her. I wanted to find more of her work and thought ChatGPT could at least give me a list of albums featuring her. And it did! It gave me a dozen albums to look for. Only … none of them existed. Not a single one. ChatGPT made up a whole discography for this singer instead of saying “sorry, I don’t know”. And when I went looking for them and found they didn’t exist, I told it this and it did its “sorry, I made a mistake, here’s the right list” thing … and that list contained half of the old list that I’d already pointed out didn’t exist and half new entries that, you guessed it!, also didn’t exist.

And the problem is that ChatGPT is just as certain when hallucinating as it is when telling things that are true. It is PARTICULARLY unsuited to be a source of information.