AnarchistArtificer

@AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Life pro tip for friends of pharmacists⁩ ⁨⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I would never have made the connection without reading your comment, but once I read it, I almost spat out my coffee.

  Something that especially resonates with my experience is that my optometrist advised practicing holding my eye open for contacts without trying to put anything near my eye, because even before I tried putting in the contacts, my upper lid kept trying to close , and that made it harder to hold my lids in the correct position.

  Man, this made me laugh. I feel like I’ve mentally saved away your original comment, because some day, there will be an opportunity to make this comparison to someone else who will find it as hilarious as I did.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Life pro tip for friends of pharmacists⁩ ⁨⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  You can start practicing just with your fingers — I find it easiest with two. Put your fingers in your mouth as far back as you can without gagging, and leave them there for a few moments, breathing through your nose. It’s important that you don’t go so far as to make yourself gag — I’ve heard that this can actually strengthen your gag reflex, so go slowly.

  I found the breathing the most challenging part of it, so practicing with my fingers in this way helped a lot with that. Doing this every day made a huge difference after only a week or two. A big tip that I’d give is that you shouldn’t take a big breath in before trying to deep throat — in hindsight, that’s something that I would often do, and it made things harder. What actually got me started practicing this was that I saw someone who could go all the way down and basically hold a large cock in their throat for an extended time — far longer than one could do in one breath. That made me realise that I needed to focus on being able to calmly breathe through my nose at a regular rate.

  If you want to move to something larger, a softer jelly dildo can be useful to practice on, I’ve heard, but I found that practicing with fingers was sufficient.

  When you’re actually going down on someone, note whether their penis has a curve to it, as many does. When I had a partner who had an upwards curve, I found that I needed to approach it from the direction of their stomach (so either lounging on the bed beside them, or straddling their chest). A downward curve makes it much easier to approach from below, which is convenient if you’re kneeling and your partner is standing.

  I also found it useful to actively try to relax my throat muscles. It was hard for me to know what a relaxed throat felt like at first, which meant that I found exercises like this helpful. I also found that when I was being too ambitious when practicing with a partner, my throat muscles becamenless relaxed. That’s why I found it useful to practice with fingers: I had as much time as I needed to practice until things became automatic, rather than having to worry about putting on a titillating performance for a partner.

  An auxiliary tip that’s useful in general for blowjobs is that you can use your hands to sort of simulate deep throating by stimulating the base of the penis at the same rhythm as what your head is moving at. This also makes it easier to gradually working up to taking more of the penis in your throat, in your own time (the last thing most people want is to end up puking on their partner, after all)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon thinks about wheat⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Humans are very clever. Sometimes I feel very clever because I have learned so many cool facts and skills with the internet, and then I think about all the knowledge I hold that people of the past managed to figure out from scratch, and it blows my mind

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Will the government be able to put 2 & 2 together⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  The UK government certainly don’t know. I wouldn’t put it past them to do something stupid like banning it on the household level, which would really fuck things up for people who need to use VPNs for their job.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm there!⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In the Spring, you can help man the fish doorbell. It’s good fun for the second monitor, if you have one.

  Context copied from the linked page:

  "Every spring, thousands of fish swim through Utrecht’s canals and waterways, searching for a place to spawn and reproduce.

  In the heart of the city lies the beautiful Weerdsluis, a manually operated lock. When the lock gates are closed, fish are forced to wait, wasting valuable time and energy – making them easy prey for birds and predatory fish.

  To help the fish, an underwater camera is installed at the lock. If fish appear on screen, you can press the doorbell! This alerts the lock keeper, who will open the lock when many fish are waiting. You can “ring” the Fish Doorbell from early March to late May

  People do so enthusiastically every year. In 2024, the Fish Doorbell attracted around 2.7 million viewers, from America to Brazil! The project has gained global recognition, helping people worldwide learn about fish migration and Utrecht’s underwater world."

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm there!⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Do you have advice on how to find this kind of artisan seminar?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm there!⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I really like Citizen Science. Beyond its scientific impact, I’ve seen it have a hugely beneficial impact on people who get involved in this way (I know a lot of people who help with collecting samples of river water and testing its quality). Rather than scientific progress being something that is done to a person, with them having no say in it due to not being a scientist, they get to be a part of the progress, which gives them a sense of personal investment in our scientific knowledge.

  Plus it helps them to trust science more, because they get to see it as it really is: deeply messy and human. Us scientists are not nearly as objective as we may like to believe, but that’s sort of the whole point of the scientific method — that’s how we try to acknowledge and set aside our subjective messiness, and get closer to objectivity, even if we can never truly reach it. Getting to understand how science functions within society gives people a deeper sense of trust because it’s more authentic.

  And on top of that, citizen science is useful for challenging the arrogance of scientists who believe that their field of study makes them superior to people who studied the humanities (or people who didn’t do higher education). I know, because deep in the back of my brain, I was one of those asshole scientists. Getting involved in citizen science project helped me to recognise how valuable it can be to get different perspectives and systems of knowledge production. There’s a lot of cool stuff going on beyond the ivory tower, and I’m glad to have been thoroughly humbled by the experience.

  It’s also so cool as well to get to share stuff that I love with people I didn’t think I had much in common with. Turns out we have a big thing in common: we don’t want shit in our rivers, we know the water companies are fucking us over with their bullshit excuses, and we want to be able to take our vague mistrust and anxiety, and turn it into something concrete we can use. And so we find ourselves united in our quest to quantify the ways in which the water companies are failing in their duty.

  It’s very cool, and it makes me a bit more hopeful for the role of science in society

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dad jokes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  One dad to rule them all

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree with the ethical standpoint of banning Generative AI on the grounds that it’s trained on stolen artist data, but I’m not sure how tenable “trained on stolen artist data” is as a technical definition of what is not acceptable.

  For example, if a model were trained exclusively on licensed works and data, would this be permissible? Intuitively, I’d still consider that to be Generative AI (though this might be a moot point, because the one thing I agree with the tech giants on is that it’s impractical to train Generative AI systems on licensed data because of the gargantuan amounts of training data required)

  Perhaps it’s foolish of me to even attempt to pin down definitions in this way, but given how tech oligarchs often use terms in slippery and misleading ways, I’ve found it useful to try pin terms down where possible

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, that was my understanding of things too. What I’m curious about is how the Indie Game awards define it. Because if games that use ((Procedural Generation) AND NOT (Generative AI)) are permitted, then that would surely require a way of cleanly delineating between Generative AI and the rest of procedural generation that exists beyond generative AI

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not so much talking about machine learning being implemented in the final game, but rather used in the development process.

  For example, if I were to attempt a naive implementation of procedurally generated terrains, I imagine I’d use noise functions to create variety (which I wouldn’t consider to be machine learning). However, I would expect that this would end up producing predictable results, so to avoid that, I could try chucking in a bunch of real world terrain data, and that starts getting into machine learning.

  A different, less specific example I can imagine a workflow for is reinforcement learning. Like if the developer writes code that effectively says "give me terrain that is [a variety of different parameters], then when the system produces that for them, they go “hmm, not quite. Needs more [thing]”. This iterative process could, of course, be done without any machine learning, if the dev was tuning the parameters themselves at each stage, but it seems plausible to me that it could use machine learning (which would involve tuning model hyperparameters rather than parameters).

  You make a good point about procedural generation at runtime, and I agree that this seems unlikely to be viable. However, I’d be surprised if it wasn’t used in the development process though in at least some cases. I’ll give a couple of hypothetical examples using real games, though I emphasise that I do not have grounds to believe that either of these games used machine learning during development, and that this is just a hypothetical pondering.

  For instance, in Valheim, maps are procedurally generated. In the meadows biome, you can find raspberry bushes. Another feature of the meadows biome is that it occasionally has large clearings that are devoid of trees, and around the edges of these clearings, there is usually a higher rate of raspberry bushes. When I played, I wondered why this was the case — was it a deliberate design decision, or just an artifact of how the procedural generation works? Through machine learning, it could in theory, be both of these things — the devs could tune the hyperparameters a particular way, and then notice that the output results in raspberry bushes being more likely to occur in clusters on the edge of clearings, which they like. This kind of process would require any machine learning to be running at runtime

  Another example game is Deep Rock Galactic. I really like the level generation it uses. The biomes are diverse and interesting, and despite having hundreds of hours in the game, there are very few instances that I can remember seeing the level generation being broken in some way — the vast majority of environments appear plausible and natural, which is impressive given the large number of game objects and terrain. The level generation code that runs each time a new map is generated has a heckton of different parameters and constraints that enable these varied and non-broken levels, and there’s certainly no machine learning being used at runtime here, but I can plausibly imagine machine learning being useful in the development process, for figuring out which parameters and constraints were the most important ones (especially because too many will cause excessive load times for players, so reducing that down would be useful).

  Machine learning certainly wouldn’t be necessary in either of these examples, but it could be something that could make certain parts of development easier.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shitty stores that penalise you for not having their store card⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This always irks me, like if you’re going to harvest my data, could you at least use some of your immense repository of data insights to improve your product? No? You’re just going to enclose the data commons in your ridiculous quest to make the line go up, without giving any value back to the people who facilitated your growth? Yeah, I thought that’d be the case. Disappointed, but not surprised that this is the case.

  The context in which this most often annoys me is that nearly every Tuesday, I go to a philosophy discussion group at a nearby pub. I usually get the route up on Google maps through Android Auto because the optimal route depends a lot on traffic, and each time, I have to manually type in the name of the pub.

  It especially annoys me when sometimes, on a day that isn’t Tuesday, the pub will be listed near the top of the suggested destinations when I first launch Google maps. I literally never go to that pub for any reason other than the philosophy group.

  It’s such a trivial thing to be annoyed by, but equally, it appears to me that actually giving useful suggestions in straightforward cases such as this is equally trivial. It reveals that they truly don’t give a fuck about improving products (and indeed, when it comes to Google’s offerings, so much of it has gotten worse. Google assistant and its voice recognition used to be way more reliable and powerful in the past. I first started using Android 10 years ago and I had so much fun tinkering with automation on my Nexus 6; there are things that I could do before that I no longer can, and it annoys me to no end)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shitty stores that penalise you for not having their store card⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d appreciate it if you could let us know if you find anything

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Facts⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A while back, I was talking to some people at a bar and the discussion turned to Skyrim Vs Oblivion, with Oblivion being the table’s preference due to being less dumbed down than Skyrim. I chipped in something like “if that’s what you like about games, then Morrowind’s where it’s at”, to which someone quipped “you’re showing your age there”.

  I admit, I took a little bit of psychic damage from that. I’m only 29, so pretty young compared to most Morrowind fans, but I was the second oldest person in this discussion. Part of me still thinks of Zoomers as teenagers

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Can someone help me to understand the difference between Generative AI and procedural generation (which isn’t something that’s relevant for Expedition 33, but I’m talking about in general).

  Like, I tend to use the term “machine learning” for the legit stuff that has existed for years in various forms, and “AI” for the hype propelled slop machines. Most of the time, the distinction between these two terms is pretty clean, but this area seems to be a bit blurry.

  I might be wrong, because I’ve only worked with machine learning in a biochemistry context, but it seems likely that modern procedural generation in games is probably going to use some amount of machine learning? In which case, would a developer need to declare usage of that? That feels to me like it’s not what the spirit of the rule is calling for, but I’m not sure

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Increasing the surface area of a substance increases its reaction rate. Proof by garlic.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Did they know it was you? Or did you sheepingly pretend to also be annoyed at the smell

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Thank Goodness You're Here - most absurd & hilarious game what did I just play?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ooh, Barnsley! That’s actually super close to where I hail from (we had a Barnsley phone number and post code, despite not technically being in Barnsley). That’s so cool, it’s not the kind of place you typically see depicted in media

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Thank Goodness You're Here - most absurd & hilarious game what did I just play?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “Northern Englishest”

  As a Yorkshire lass living in Manchester, you have me intrigued with this description. Hell, I’m more than intrigued — you’ve sold me on it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ad block block⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This extension is Art

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your gaming highlights of 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve not played Factorio Space Age yet, but I’m looking forward to it whenever I next get a hankering for Factorio.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your gaming highlights of 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Your pitch has sold me on it. Yet another game to add to my wishlist

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your gaming highlights of 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That sounds like a space version of Eco, with the roles stuff. In Eco, it’s impossible for one person to acquire all skills, so people on a server have to specialise.

  I started out as a miner, to honour my late best friend who was a dwarf at heart and would definitely have been a miner if he’d been playing with us. Then I branched out into masonry to make use of the absurd amounts of stone I’d been mining. If I wanted something made of wood, I had to go flutter my eyelashes at my friend who had started out as a logger and branched into carpentry. I enjoyed having a domain that was my own, and a clear way to be useful to the server. Other players had some level of mining and masonry skill by the midgame, but for anything serious, they had to wait until I was online.

  It sounds like Space Station 14 is far more hectic than this, but in an interesting way. I wonder if it will scratch the same itch that Eco did wrt being useful in a clear role

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your gaming highlights of 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Space Station 14 sounds interesting. What kind of multiplayer is it? I.e. is it one where the typical experience is to play with randoms via matchmaking, or is it a game best enjoyed with friends?

  I have discord server full of nerds who I played games with during COVID (and its aftermath), and this might be a good excuse to see if I can reawaken that server for games

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your gaming highlights of 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’ve reminded me that I still need to finish that. When I started it, I played it so much that I burnt myself out on it a tad (not in a bad way, just in a way that requires I take a break and play something else for a while). I’m looking forward to getting back to it.

  I didn’t play the first game, but I remember seeing a lot of the promo/development stuff about it because my partner at the time was super interested in it. My impression of the first game was that it was ambitious and interesting, but rocky in its implementation, but the second one is a refinement in all the ways you would expect a sequel to be. Certainly I have enjoyed it thus far

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your gaming highlights of 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for replying and giving me yet another game that I’ve not even heard of that I’m probably going to check out.

  I’m not a huge RTS person, but occasionally I get a strong craving for one. Next time I do, I’ll see if Beyond all reason scratches that itch

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your gaming highlights of 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve never heard of Drova or Cruelty Squad, so thanks for the recommendations. This thread has given me so many interesting games to check out, thanks for replying

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your gaming highlights of 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If @blomvik@sopuli.xyz hadn’t already sold me on Cruelty Squad, you certainly have now. In terms of vibes, it sounds right up my alley.

  And I do love a bonkers community. I find that when I get into a piece of media (whether that be a game, TV series or something else), I really enjoy participating in what I call “fandom tourism”. I enjoy dipping my toe into the community after I’ve engaged with the media itself, and it feels like bonus content. I don’t tend to stick around in any fandoms, so that means that even if a community is bonkers in a bad way (e.g. lots of drama), I even sort of enjoy being able to understand and spectate those dynamics, as a quasi-outsider

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your gaming highlights of 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve heard so many good things about Lies of P that I think I’ve been avoiding it in a similar way to how I was irrationally reluctant to play Hollow Knight. It’s a bit of a moot point at the moment, because I don’t currently have the brain space to get my teeth into a Soulslike, but when I do, I should resist that silly instinct of mine.

  I’ve not heard much of Dispatch, I should check it out

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your gaming highlights of 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Most of those games are ones I’ve never heard of before, but you’ve really sold me on them, especially Split Fiction and UFO 50

  (Mini tangent, but I find it interesting how, in this age of algorithmically driven slip content, I cherish the opportunity to find little snippets of meaningful connection with my fellow humans. Like, I don’t know you, or anything really about your preferences or tastes in games, so what reason is there to put much weight in your recommendations? You’re just a random person on the internet, after all. But no, your recommendations feel meaningful because you’re a person who cared enough about these things to write about them, and matters to me (especially in our current climate))

  If I was going to try out Split Fiction and UFO 50, which would you recommend I start with?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your gaming highlights of 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Nice! I haven’t attempted Sekiro yet, but it’s high up on my list. I am saving it for when I have the brain space to take a proper crack at the game. I remember that my first exposure to Fromsoft games was in 2017, when I attempted Dark Souls 3 during a Summer where I extremely burnt out due to doing a soul-sucking internship. I bounced off of it so hard, and that taught me that I need to be in the right headspace to play certain games.