Bay 12 Games Forum

Many social issues are wicked problems characterized by complexity, uncertainty and lack of clear cut solutions, these include things like poverty or climate change, we all know they exist but we don't know what the best way to solve the, only faith-based approaches that involve subjective perceptions of situation, values, needs and wants.

I mean, it's a point worth making that while we don't know the best ways to solve things like poverty or climate change, we do in fact know really damn good ways to. We know cutting emissions would help with climate change and know a slate of highly effective ways of doing so, we know dozens of ways to slash poverty that are within most societies' means of effecting, from housing to various sorts of welfare.

Many social issues factually have entirely clear cut solutions that we're 100% certain work and often aren't even particularly complicated*, they're just ones certain segments of the population with more societal power than they bloody should have are very insistent we don't implement.

General point being, for all the so-called soft sciences are indeed working with wicked problems that are much more difficult to address and handle than the hard sciences are, they're not just faith based guessing games throwing stuff at a wall without being able to tell what sticks. They've advanced a long bloody way over the years, and for all the problems with them and the distance left to go there's a lot they've managed to piece together that's pretty damn solid.

*Just as an example, just about the most effective and cost efficient means of reducing homelessness we're aware of is to just goddamn give people a home. Don't gate it, don't make it have hoops to jump through, just give them three hots and a cot with a permanent address. The costs are less than the costs involved in leaving them on the street, it's just about the most effective means we're aware of for keeping them from ending up back on the street, so on and so forth. Homelessness is a problem with a solution that would be cheaper than not addressing the problem and more effective and efficient than more or less any other proposed solution in existence.

Except people are brainwormed, unfortunately especially among the world's religious (just world fallacy is a hell of a drug), and refuse to just. Do. That. For a pile of reasons, none of them good.

Five'll get you ten the answer will be business -- but off the record significantly due to the fact that siding with religion on this one would also be benefiting jews, muslims, etc. The conservative part of that bench is pretty likely to go out of their way to piss on religious observance that isn't christian, and they're entirely aware siding with this guy means non-christians get their piece of that pie, too.

... no, I'm definitely thinking of salt as a detriment -- I'm doctor mandated to be avoiding the stuff as much as reasonable, heh. The more expensive thing just has less stuff in it. It's just bread either way, even the cheap stuff is fairly safe as stateside food goes. It just has nearly double the salt.

It's one of those things I've kvetched about before, but sometimes it just... there's really stark examples. Recently noticed a new-ish type of bread they're selling ("keto-friendly" nonsense, but like the organic nonsense for some other stuff I buy, that crap isn't the point of why I get it) that has significantly less (~70 mg per slice vs ~110 for 1 in standard bread, with slice size and whatnot about even) salt in it but still tastes fine (There's actually outright near saltless bread I've found, but beyond storage issues it tastes just kinda' foul), and, like.

It's about twice the price of the cheap wheat bread around here. Twice the price, just to get something with ~half the salt.

I get why it happens (less demand, so less scale benefit, fancy horseshit=price gouging, etc.), but it's still a WTF every time for price to go up as material amount goes down. There's a part of me that's persistently insistent it's bullshit to pay more to get less of something

I think it might be simpler than that? Spritework is just a hell of a lot easier to make pretty than 3D/cell-shaded/etc. The lower fidelity means less points of failure, heh, while keeping enough design space to look good. It's hard to fuck up a line of pixels, it's real easy to fuck up a line on a 3D model or comic-style drawing or whatev'.

It's legal when there's some specific need for one, iirc (e.g. actors, certain doctors, some models, etc.). Generally it's not, but there's exceptions.

So far as posting it that way goes, it's probably trying to get folks with an eye for inclusivity or whatev' -- it's not a terrible filter to use to catch folks that'd get pissy over a company noting they're fine with enby folks or something, as they're probably either going to avoid the posting or act like an ass about it.

Frankly, even though it's explicitly noting it'll consider anyone, it probably tilts their applicants towards female or gender nonconforming folks just due to common biases in most societies... which may be the point.

That thumping noise cats make when they run themselves into furniture or walls just... it doesn't seem to get old. Always good for a chuckle.

also for advanced laser pointer spinnies, do half the circle on the floor and the other half on the wall

if your cat's on the ball they'll keep spinning anyway, just partially vertical it's great