Arkhive

Funny enough there’s a section on body cams in a video essay that was just released by a creator I think does pretty good work. The video is technically about other things, but body cams come up in the conversation and the video goes into pretty good depth on them.

Jacob Geller - Reality is a Camera Trick

I feel the same way about big corpo social media. All these people screaming “boycott billionaires” below an ad that funds the billionaires.

Oof. This hurt my soul. I tell myself it’s worth it “for the reproducibility”

I’m not denying the usage of the footage. Like yes, of course that is the exact example of when it should be used. However, many times, even if not releasing footage seems incriminating to the populace, when it is successfully withheld accountability is lost. Even when the footage is released cops often see no consequences for their actions, so the footage ends up just serving to normalize and broadcast police violence resulting in control via fear not peace via collaboration. But that’s all more anecdotal I fear.

In the end the data pretty much says body cams have a negligible impact on policing, at least according to this PBS article (most of the way through the article for that), but you can also cherry pick quotes from this to support pretty much any stance.

The idealized version of body cams would help with police reform, but I don’t believe in reform, I believe in abolition, so in the end they just look to me like giving them more tech to be twisted for oppression rather than accountability. If police thought body cams would hold them accountable they wouldn’t care about citizens filming them, and the fact people are being prosecuted for doing that says everything it needs to about what the police think about footage of their violence and crimes.

Just my thoughts. If you’ve got better info than my lone article from a source I’m slightly partial to I’d love to read it! I took a class on carceral technology, and I’ll try to track down some of the sources we used!

Idk. I feel some kind of way about this. Like, pay your sex workers, but most of this stuff was far from ethically made itself, so of course get it on the seas.

I guess moral of the story is consider tipping or supporting your favorite sex workers if they still have an active presence in the industry.

Yeah seems super interesting. Thanks for the info!

Oh right, totally forgot SoulSeek isn’t distributed like that. Very cool. Might have to check this out and do some treasure hunting. I love stumbling across old odd files on stuff like this.

Ohhh more like SoulSeek. Okay okay. Very cool. Thanks for the info!

Maybe I’m too young and missed an era, but what is this? I mean I understand it’s a peer to peer file sharing protocol and network (might be using wrong terms), but what does that actually mean as far as the end user? Basically a private tracker but one “layer” further up? Sort of bridging the gap from Usenet to BitTorrent? ELIF by all means! I’m curious about this.

OoooOo. I like those. In a class I took on this, we used “meat space” as sort of a joke, but also in a lack of a better term way. The author Legacy Russell speaks at length about this in their book Glitch Feminism. Russell streamlines it to just using AFK to describe non-digital interaction because she is coming from a life where digital interactions where the default as they allowed for better senses and explorations of self and identity. It’s a great read that informed a lot of my own thinking on digital third spaces and re-humanizing the internet.

The loss of a third space, digital ones included, often feels like loosing a loved one, because in the end you are loosing the connection to people you might not know, but we’re still glad to see around. Spam crouching at a guardian in the tower, or doing donuts around a blueberry in the cosmodrome, are genuine human moments. They are the same as chatting with the barista, or petting a stranger’s dog in a park.

I hate “IRL” because it implies a falseness to digital interactions, but those are still “real life”. Destiny unironically helped remind me there’s real humans on the other end of digital interactions. I have lifelong friends across the world because of that game.

I know this is the piracy comm, so this is a bit antithetical, but if it’s mostly for smaller/local bands considering just buying their albums on Bandcamp. Or maybe there’s a kind soul on SoulSeek that is already a fan of the groups you’re looking for.

Every tool I knew of that could pull from Spotify has shut down one by one over the last year or so. As such, I’m also interested in what other folks have to say in this thread.

If I’m remembering correctly, the data on body cams actually shows they don’t help with police accountability much at all, and instead just serve as additional surveillance of already over policed communities. Like I’m pretty sure they haven’t reduced rates of police violence. I’ll try to find the paper I read about this, but basically giving police more technology isn’t the solution, abolishing them is.

+1 for this

First I’m hearing of BasicSync. Thanks for mentioning it.

Maybe set up an SMB share or something? I’m generally happy with syncthing, but every now and then I do just want to dump files off device. For that I keep a share running over Tailscale (Headscale soon™) and use that in a pinch.

Like Tears in Durian

Oof. Some 60 hours late or something. Life got…hectic, for a bit there.

TL:DR tinker with the world settings a lot, maybe check out some mods, and plant flax immediately.

Firstly if you didn’t get a good foothold before summer of year one I would probably restart. Basically if you don’t get a decent flax farm underway quickly the save is going to get REALLY hard come winter. Playing multiplayer can smooth that curve a lot by allowing delegating of jobs. Basically you should always have someone foraging for seeds and small supplies of flax and veggies and then someone else working on the tech progression.

I totally agree with the other comment that mentioned using the map. Being able to quickly navigate to various ore deposits and resources like clay is very important. Also learning proper 3 point navigation can be a huge help. Even though the map has a pip for your character it can help a lot to just begin to memorize the greater area around your settlement. Being able to triangulate based just on surroundings without much need for the map also makes longer expeditions easier and less disorienting.

The other big learning curve for me was the prospectors pick. Learning the approximate size of ore deposits can help a lot. Having sort of learned triangulation without numbers for navigation, now we will be getting numeric feedback to help us. When making a mine after doing area search, periodically mine in node search to scan for your desired ore. Once detected pick an axis to mine along until the node search result changes, check every couple blocks. Step back one block and mine a few holes in the walls of the tunnel in node search mode to see which direction along the opposite axis the deposit is. Now you have the approximate angle to mine to go right through the middle of the whole area and intersect the node perfectly.

Finally I’ll add this. VS has vast vast vast customization options. Sure you can argue the “intended” way to play is the default difficulty setting, but also screw that. Play your way. I personally have tuned the water settings to have slightly more distinct continents that are separated by decent sized oceans, and I’ve extended both the day length and matched up the numbers of days per month to the actual calendar. This makes for a slightly less punishing experience for solo play, while still giving some big challenges when it comes to crossing those oceans just for a resource your continent might not have. This means huge prep time to big expositions, and the need to really amass a base supply of resources to be able to quickly establish other camps and shelters that you will stay at while getting what you came for and getting supplies for the return trip. I’d also honestly encourage browsing the mods. The community is very active and has a lot of great options, but if I had to suggest just one (well technically more), it would be a wind mod and a small collection of boat mods. Then really pump the water settings and turn those gathering missions into massive, multi day crossings were you might be in open ocean for 1 even 2 whole in game days.

This doesn’t eat too much of your time because of the extended day and calendar settings, while also still leaning into the sort of “make you feel small” effect the game sort of goes for. It also gives your crops time to grow. Plus having to manage the sailing, even with a very rudimentary implementation, keeps me quite engaged.

The game in my mind, feels really good when I’ve set up a bunch of multi day processes (growing crops, tanning leather, preserving food for example) and also prepped for a trip then run off while all my stuff is working with a new resource for a new age.

As far as multiplayer goes it makes the game a lot easier. Purely from being able to multithread tasks. But it’s also very fun especially if everyone takes a unique class and really leans into building a village with cottage industry specific workshop/home combo builds. It’s just naturally emerges as both the best for quickly walking between each others workshops and a cute village.

That’s a lot of my thoughts on the game. Maybe should just turn that into a post somewhere, but here ya go.

I’m replying to let you know I’ve seen this, but I can’t type the response I want to right this instant. It’s going to be like 6-8 hours before I probably have the chance, but I’ll totally share some guidance!!

I love VS!! My go to block game!