beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

So, I was thinking about my epic lack of social skills, and ongoing shortage of brickspace friends, and it occurred to me to think about it in hours spent. Which of course makes me think of GURPS rules for study
http://beccaelizabeth.dreamwidth.org/2683842.html

Getting to know a person is like a specialist topic. And you probably can't study books about them, mostly, though people something enough to have instruction manuals would be an interesting category. Reading their journal might count, but only i they're, like, super chatty and write all the things.

... my journal. Probably counts.
But I do skim the highlights only, for a lot of topics.
... yes I know it's very wordy for highlights.

Most people most of the time are not deliberately teaching you about themselves. There would be times they were, but probably not often.

And the kind of thing that counts as intensive training? Probably not going to come up in routine social interaction.

So most people most of the time, hanging out with them is like learning on the job.

Some people are in fact your job, but then all you need to know about them relates to your job, so the primary skill is your job skill, and different clients are, like, familiarisation penalties. (B169) Eight hours practice gives you familiarity with a new model. Before then you're at -2 even if you have the relevant skill. So you can improve rapidly in those 8 hours, which seems to be all Torchwood does to teach guns, but might make an instructor think they were really good at teaching. But with people, 8 hours getting to know them would get you over the really awkward stage.

But then just hanging out not teaching in particular? 800 hours. To get one point better. Than default. For a maximum of 8 hours a day.

Sooooo... that could take a while.

And I, personally, leave the house maybe 8 hours a week?
And much of that time is spent on the bus.

So to get over the first awkward might take two or three weeks, but then to actually start getting skill points in This New Person, that will take at least a hundred weeks. Or two hundred. Or... more.

And if any particular person is only there for one activity a month? A hundred months.

... which is a bit of a long time, really, and a complete explanation for only shallow acquaintance, without social skill penalties being involved at all.

Which makes me feel better about it.



... I mean my social skill penalties are also significant, but, theoretically not insurmountable, given sufficient time with an actual particular human.



Finding one you like well enough to invest 800 hours in is a tricky bit.


It was way easier when we got all those hours by osmosis at school, every single day, for years.

... easier in a way that I purely couldn't do any more, but, you know, in the friend-hours equation, that went faster.



So, new theory: just need more hours.


... at my age...

The whole Mick and Len split in Legends season one is plenty well written and makes some really sad sorts of sense
because they have had very different experiences on this team, and quite deliberately so.

( Read more... )

Mick did logical. Len did logical. They just had different data to logic with.

And were having too many feelings in too much danger to compare notes and talk it out.

So all that all happened.




Well written, and I like it
but stopping the episodes there for the night led to reading a lot of fic, because you can't just leave them like that...

Today I decided to keep almost all the remaining unsorted books, so now they're cleanish and back on a shelf.

( Read more... )

I'm not going to be starting school in September but I reckon I could start studying things. All I'd need to do is pick up some books. Even books I already have.

I'd like to get some new and up to date books, because even if it's about history, books tend to accidentally tell a lot about the time they're written, and I want some with as broad a perspective as we've yet figured. History with the women actually in it, for instance. History that knows Britain wasn't white, and quite a lot of interesting things happened that weren't in Britain.

I can start with the library, or the university library even, though they'll get busy. I can look in their catalogues. And I can go buy nice thick history books with interesting angles, like things about trade routes, or the importance of cloth.

Many possibilities.

also today I kept finding clothes that would be great for one of my characters, cause the colors have changed to their sort of thing now, and I was just looking for a jacket like that, and... since I am not my character this was not entirely helpful.

But time agents in green gold black could do some good shopping at Sainsburys right now.

I successfully went to the dentist
it takes aaaaages, like 45 minutes driving and parking and waiting until appointment time, then a quarter hour waiting past time, then all the driving home again.

and i got to go back next month have teeth cleaned.

but teeth are okay, so that's nice.

Watched all of season 2 in 2 days.
... still needs more women.

and less ( Read more... )

it divides their world into players, with at least some free will left, and pawns, who can only act when others push the buttons. and that's really thoroughly wrong.

but hey, interesting characters, twisty world, stuff to watch.




also, from a science fiction point of view, the inconsistent application of local tech level just... it makes very little sense. if one guy was modded to be immortal, then immortality is within the reach of humanity. if one guy has a matter printer, it makes it real difficult to explain why they don't live in a post replicator society, though he did have a bigger energy supply than pretty much anyone. if they've got androids that can pass for human then why do they have prostheses that can't? if they've got AI that can want kissing and run around being snarky at each other then why aren't AI closer to being citizens, or any significant part of the plot? why mention that someone too extensively modded isn't legally a person, and then do nothing with that?


how can their society exist, given the technology they repeatedly demonstrate?


they don't answer that, so they make messes of their setup.


but the running around doing politics and rebellion stuff is interesting to watch, so, there's that.

Mum did visit and take a bag and a box of books and things

I sent away three mugs I had glass painted, because they can't go in the dishwasher so I never use them

and mum took the old christmas tree, because it is basically made of allergen now, so it's no use to me, and a bit harm, and grandma wouldn't want me to keep it if harm, so it should go. so now it is gone.

... i am going to miss the tree, but there's no getting it clean enough, world of itch cough only. (for both of us even, oops)

some of the books are set aside for mum later, some are still here because more than one load in the box, but many are gone to new places for new owners.

ETA: Mum came back with more bags so now all the books are all gone, onwards to the next thing. /eta

so now I have space. yaay.
:-)

I just watched pretty much all of this in a row.

That was a lot of twists for six episodes.

I think I'd have to rewatch to unpack details. I got the impression they tried to introduce or use more female characters, but there still seemed to be an upper limit on how many per episode, and I still feel that men and their choices were what drove the whole thing. Which is frustrating.

But. Kiera got her ending.

( Read more... )

Continuum was intricate. Or tangled. It had a lot of characters and killed a lot of them, some of them repeatedly, or in alternate timelines. Some of them one self killed another, which, way psychological, but twisty. And all the politics and money and corporations, it's just... really ambitious, to tell through the story of one cop who wants to go home.

It did a lot of good stuff.

Next time I'll watch it slower and do more thinking about how.

Today I once again fail at Choose A New Laptop
even though when I tick all the boxes for things I think I want it narrows it down to two things
and one of them has as much hard drive as my current desktop.

this is because i understand none of the numbers, have only a vague idea what i'll even do with it, and don't even know if i need as much hard drive as i've currently got.

i keep expecting to choose a thing, get it, not know how to use it, and just... have this expensive thing that lies around being a monument to my ignorance.

but reading things isn't reducing ignorance in a useful way, because everything is numbers and they'll be different in a few months anyway.

also the thing one really needs is an idea what you'll do with it, and i just have aspirations.

scrivener to be an aspiring writer with more bells and whistles
something to do art, with a pen, which seems fancy and versatile, even though i haven't done art for years, i haven't written much either, that's not the point
games, but probably mostly The Sims, which says Windows 7 or 8 so what does that mean when all the new things are 10? just play it anyway? break all the things? important and beyond me.

i mean you say gaming the computer thinks you're getting new releases, but honestly i'd rather play existing games forever, just they don't work anymore.



is so frustrating.
books are better. books continue functioning for centuries without maintenance.

... books don't do so many things so i'll have to suck it up and buy something eventually.

I've mentioned before how one way to play a strict Laws of Time kind of time travel is like a heist movie: history cannot be changed, but history is *recorded* history, the cameras and guards and alarms. The time travellers are the flashback that changes the whole context of what we've seen.

So today I was thinking, if you want to slip around history without being in the books, you want to talk to women.

And black people, people of color, disabled people, people from subordinated groups in general.

History books are as precise as they get when it's about the actions of kings. They ain't real particular about most servants.

And it do get harder the closer you get to now. In a hypothetical future where everything is recorded from multiple angles with local power and distributed backups always, you probably can't change things much. But usually there's plenty of wiggle room.

Because usually there's plenty of things people don't bother to know, and plenty of people they don't see.



So. Once again I am frustrated that Legends of Tomorrow have the perfect crew for this and yet do not use this approach.

Because this would be a show that would be all about the inconvenience of working around the centred white guy, by working with the people who made up the vast majority of what happened.

Just finished watching what gets called, in episode, Eobard Thawne's origin story.

The entire morality of this show depends on the physics of time travel, and yet it can never decide what the damn rules are.

( Read more... )

This cannot be the original origin story, if Eo!Wells told the truth. Simplest answer is he lied, but he told most of his observable lies by slicing the truth really damn fine, which leaves that less simple.

What this absolutely can be is a way to build a stable loop. Everything we observed can be a logical consequence of what Thawne heard here.

With the teensy tiny problem of him not being born anywhen, which takes the 'stable' right out of it.



I still haven't seen Legends season two - I'm rewatching slowly so when the dvds come out I'll have everything fresh and well chewed over - but I imagine it'll complicate more than clarify.


The whole ethics of the situation and reading of a pretty central character depends on their laws of time
but their time has no laws
and the speed force is even more a chaotic thing of itself
so there's no making sense of anything
or anyone.



Still, whatever his reasons, Thawne does seem to have a lot of fun being a villain
which undermines the predestination tragedy reading pretty thoroughly.

Simplest if he's just a jerk.



But most fitting the canon thus far if he's a time traveller trying to deal with shifting memories while staying focused on the goal of maintaining a stable timeline where the Flash was the inspiration for Reverse Flash and he, in a backwards way, returned the favor.

... yet stable timeline is not a thing you associate with him by simplest reading...


and round and round the illogic goes.




Time travel. Why did they focus on time travel? It takes so much work to even vaguely make sense.



... and I realise people not me are putting less effort into making sense of Eobard Thawne, but, you know, villains and rogues...

My new dishwasher is here :-)
it is shiny and properly registered on the website and installed by the shop.

also, while looking up the local water hardness, I found out the Really Big Puddle is going to be fixed on the 15th, which is pretty good, considering how busy it is and all the diggings they'll need.

I am reading the instructions before I start using the thing. But I'll need to use it pretty soon because dishes, so I won't sit and stare at it too long. Just long enough to figure all these instructions and associated chemistry...

"Earth Magic" by Francis Hitching is also getting weeded out of my library.
Don't think I've ever read it. Tried to today but got bored real quick. It reckons it will be half about archaeology and half about the people who think visions and dowsing and ley lines are an interesting guide to prehistory. It also seems dead impressed with the fact you can draw straight lines on a map and make triangles.

I figure the archaeology will be out of date, and the ley line stuff will stay as subjective and belief driven as ever.
Earlier me collected stuff in the expectation bits of it would be proven, or be disproved, eventually.
But a lot of it turns out to not be that kind of stuff.

Bored.