I laughed and appreciate the sentiment, but I think the saga ends here.
Bulhman was an easy/correct target due to his twitter tantrum. I don't have any other 'proper' targets for mailing, nor any mailing addresses other than Paizo corporate. So while 'no bad tactics, only bad targets' might mean holding pozzed Paizo to their own rulebook (for radicals,) I have no realistic way to continue escalating.
I'd rather have the story to tell and my rulebook in hand, anyway, because physical media means something in the modern age. I'll have to content myself with not buying further products from Paizo.
Thanks.
Catholicism has been a pillar of the Western Tradition. I find it hard to argue with the faith of Tolkien and the 'men of the West.' Philosophically, even though Descartes drove me up the wall, I find myself forced to re-examine and duplicate his process. For, as Pascal suggested, there's nothing to lose and eternity to gain.
Again-- (as ever) I have to judge the tree by its fruits.
I have since asked my father about my aunt's journey through Catholicism. Here's what I learned:
According to him, our family were Ukrainian members of the Catholic Church at the time of the schism. This means they chose the Pope over the Patriarch of Constantinople. This made them practicing Roman Catholics, with a dispensation to conduct Byzantine Rites; members of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
My Grandfather was a member of St. George's in NYC. (You can see from the website, that the church continues to worship and communicate primarily in Ukrainian.) The Ukrainian language was presumed.
My father (and my aunt) attended St. George's parochial school & services-- while not being fluent. As second generation Americans, they never learned Ukrainian. This caused them both considerable angst, as their peers were recent immigrants, or 1st generation Ukrainians-- all of whom spoke Ukrainian as their primary language, if not being bi-lingual.
My Aunt changed churches (but not communions) when she moved upstate, choosing a mainline Roman Catholic church, where her interest in the Eastern Rite (due to our family heritage) saw the introduction of Eastern Iconography to her parish, which had many parishioners of Eastern European ancestry.
There's iron-triangle reinforcing 'king-maker' legislation by (over)regulation; then there's 'written in blood' safety regulations. One of the larger concerns (and few valid concerns of the Left, amidst its scaremongering) is that in scraping the former the Trump admin will also get rid of the latter. The left makes hay by conflating the two categories.
In light of FEMA dysfunction and East Palestine/TSA & EPA failures, maybe there isn't as much to save as the Left makes out-- but replacements or preservation of those 'written in blood' lessons should rightly be on the agenda for any regulatory overhaul.
Maybe? I think there's a risk of hyper-realism in gaming replacing the normal dopamine cycles that drive human behavior. Look at the skinner-box loot-crate games to see what the application of psychology to gaming can do to people already.
I think there is room for things to get worse, too.
In Larry Niven's Ringworld series, the main character has to recover from having a wire linked directly to his pleasure centers, which gave him the possibility of endless self-pleasure to the point of ego death. One could see that as the ultimate manifestation of hyperstimulation. Imagine a random payout schedule dopamine hit from your neuralink in your VR game rig, and you can see where this kind of power could be abused to manipulate behavior.
Pornography can do the same thing to human sexuality, but gaming is (for better and for worse) a more versatile medium. Our desire for escape our day-to-day reality can certainly be weaponized to create a hyper-real 'replacement' reality. This can be a trap, or a needed safety release valve. It's a technology, which is to say a tool-- and tools are only as moral as their wielders.
They know when Timmy is a penny short or a minute late.
One department might. The agency as a whole does not.
These separate departments don't know what the others are doing. It's like what happens when you sever the connection between the hemispheres of the brain, with each department behaving independently with little oversight.
The department that's paid to do clawbacks has nothing to do with fraud prevention, and neither has anything to do with the department that processes applications.
The entire edifice is dysfunctional.
I was raised without religion. Grew up fairly militantly anti-theist, think Atheist with a 'hell is immoral infinite punishment for finite crimes' chip on his shoulder.
Took the Mormons to bring me to Christ; their theology defines hell as the distancing from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The outer darkness, where even the Spirit cannot comfort you is hell.
Now that I believe, I am in a place where judgement seems wise and necessary. Still not sure about our visions of the afterlife, mind you, but more agnostic on that front than judgmental at this point. I like to think of it as learning enough of the mystery to know that I cannot know.
Still leaves me a heretic in the eyes of most of Christianity, though. There's little denying that the Latter Day Saints are a 'Cult for Christ.' Whether this makes them false prophets or just another revivalist sect is an open question to my mind. Especially since it's abundantly clear that Joseph Smith himself was a flawed charismatic preacher, who was 'touched' in ways that would land him in a psych ward today. I settle for judging them by their fruits. They're good people who I am happy to number myself among.
(This isn't to say my journey is over, spiritually speaking. I feel like due diligence as regards mainline Christianity is in order. Specifically, the Eastern Rite Roman Catholicism my late Aunt earnestly suggested I explore, the Irish Catholicism of my Maternal Grandfather, and the Eastern Orthodox faith which I find Mormonism uniquely unsuited to critique.)
Not about pronouns. Not even about Trans.
Check out his twitter: https://nitter.poast.org/tyminski_marek
He had the temerity to conduct open twitter polls: Body type A/B vs. Male/Female
Polls about attractive male and female leads
And (since the fiasco) polls about who people would trust about an upcoming video game release, and where they'd go for coverage
It's not about Trans, that's reddit mods projecting harder than an IMax. Again.
Good luck quoting twitter on the subreddit, tho. Check out the bottom of their rules section:
Direct Links to X (Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram are prohibited.
Posts or comments with direct links to X (Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram are automatically removed. This rule also applies to screenshots and any form of promotion of these platforms or their content. Attempts to circumvent this rule are strictly forbidden.
They've since gone radio silent and reversed the censorship, but really-- until the mods who responded by nuking conversation and kicking out the company from the mod team answer for what they did... the only thing they've done is decided to be quiet
Even the announcement was done by an egg account "LotF Mods." None of them have the courage of their convictions to sign off on the censorship, so all of them should be purged.
Game? Imagine a musical.
Think "The Book of Mormon" but for The Nation of Islam & Yakub. Layering in an unreliable narrator (a black man seeking his roots, perhaps) could serve as the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. And (as with most medicine) it's the dose that makes it poison or cure.
Vavra, independent studio owner who supported GG in 2014, is not Vavra, employee of Embracer Group in 2025. He sold out; something which deserves shame, not support.
KCD I is on my wishlist; KCD II isn't.