Gradine
🏳️⚧️ (she/her) 🇵🇸
The last word doesn't really mean much of anything when it's already been demonstrably disproven.
Also obligatory Wondermark:
The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread
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Also obligatory Wondermark:
MarkB
Legend
Oh thanks, you just reminded me that I need to set myself some personal goals by the end of the month, other than "keep my head down and hope that they don't downsize me in favour of some clever AI by the end of the year".It's time for the annual performance self-reviews at work.
I tried to have an AI write me a positive review, but its response was, "Um, yeah... I got nothing."
I freakin' hate reviews. An honest self-review of my performance would sound like raving narcissism - I work at a base-level monkey job, and quite frankly I didn't so much climb down out of the tree and start walking upright as I showed up on the first day driving a Beamer and drinking a latte and parked under the tree.
Because it's literally what I've spent a decent chunk of the past thirty years doing for a living on and off. Aside from sitting in one of the offices, I've pretty much worked in nearly every aspect of production work, warehousing and shipping, and now I'm working in a basic packing job again. It's making medical equipment in a clean-room environment, so it pays well, but it's basically the same set of job skills I've spent several decades already honing.
How the hell do you say, "Let's face it, it's objectively obvious that I'm the best damn packer in the building by an order of magnitude, my personal standards are higher than the company's, and you're lucky I've been too poor and lazy to look for another job so far so just give me the damn 3% raise already.", in a way that sounds reasonable and not-nearly-as-arrogant?
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
There is a difference between something being in decline and you no longer being the target customer.
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
Yep. I will be 50 years old this year, which means I've been watching this happen to me for decades.
The music industry isn't "garbage" and it isn't "in decline," I'm just not the target customer for 21st Century pop music anymore. I'm supposed to be listening to classic rock now--you know, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Pearl Jam, all of those 30+ year old bands. I'm not supposed to know anything about Taylor Swift or Post Malone.
Avocado toast? It's not "ruining the economy" and it isn't "the end of brunch as we know it." I enjoy it, I eat it regularly, but as tasty and healthy as it is, it's marketed at flannel-wearing hipsters with ironic t-shirts--not gray-haired civil engineers.
Superhero movies? Also not meant for me. My interest in this genre peaked with Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), then it started to fade with Batman Forever (1995) before it was brutally murdered by Batman & Robin (1997). I now have zero interest in any of the fifteen other Batman films and it's not because movies got worse, or the movie industry is trash--well, Batman Forever certainly is, but I digress. I just got older. I now expect different things from my theater experience, things that my younger self didn't really care about. I want complex stories, relatable characters, a surprising plot---and the superhero genre was never a reliable place to find them.
So why should D&D be any different? I've spent decades writing houserules and testing out "OSR games," trying to recapture that classic D&D feel that I once got from the Red Box Rules back in 1986, and I have come to understand something about myself: I will always be disappointed. The reason I can't find a suitable OSR game, or a gaming group to play it with, isn't because the industry is in the toilet or the game got worse or Hasbro/OGL/Whatever--it's because I'm not a teenager anymore, and I'm not playing with my teenage peers.
But that's okay. Nobody's force-feeding me avocadoes; I can still order classic buttermilk pancakes for breakfast whenever I want them. And nobody is shoving a new version of D&D down my throat either: thanks to PDFs, Roll20, and the whole Internet, I can play the same Red Box Rules I've always played, any time I want to play them, with my original middle school gaming group.
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Old Fezziwig
Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin.
I hate it when I have to cancel plans, too.
ichabod
Legned
But everyone was going to be at session this week.
trappedslider
Legend
Ryujin
Legend
I'm essentially an IT fireman (some might say IT garbageman) so when I'm working, I'm online
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