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Alexander 'Lex' Williams Profile picture
Alexander 'Lex' Williams
@squidlord
You know, once upon a time I thought things mattered. I'm a big enough man to admit when I'm wrong.
Alexander 'Lex' Williams Profile picture 1 subscribed
Jul 25, 2023 • 30 tweets • 5 min read
I've been giving it a fairly significant amount of thought for the last six months and I've come to a rather startling conclusion: #ttrpg #blogging #digitalgarden #obsidian

Social media is a complete shit show when it comes to both being social and presenting media. As a result, I'm going to go back to using it for what it's useful for – being a simple, straightforward update pointer to the actual content I'm creating.

And relatively central to that concept and content is GRIM TOKENS, my new not-exactly-a-blog-not-quite-a-wiki ... 1/28
Jun 19, 2023 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
I think (and write) a lot about writing and how stories are constructed, the underlying narrative architecture which supports storytelling in general.

This is an interesting approach to laying out a dual-axis analysis.

It's worth talking about why some things are popular and some things aren't, however. Whether you're talking about a #TTRPG or the short story you're trying to get placed in a magazine.
Jun 18, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
What we have here is another critical failure of imagination, of the sort that I have objected to in the past and will continue to object to in the future.

Science is a process. And that process can be entertaining. If you don't find that process entertaining, you're a lousy scientist. If you can't make that process entertaining, you're a lousy teacher.

He's got a PhD, right? That means he's had to teach at least a little bit along the way, right?
Jun 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I know I'm supposed to feel outrage and upset at this – but the truth is that it's kind of brilliant and sounds like something I would do given enough money and power. Look, people are stupid. In aggregate, humans are barely sapient. They are monkeys without trees. The best you can say for them is that they live in really nice caves.
Jun 17, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I feel like this will last just about exactly as long as it takes for an Uber driver to be injured or killed on a run that they would not have otherwise taken in the company being sued because they have assumed liability for it by forcing them to do it. The true irony being that this is an absolutely stupid way to go about dealing with the problem given that they control the mechanism of incentive.

If people are avoiding an area, increase the payout for taking calls in that area.
Jun 16, 2023 • 24 tweets • 6 min read
Today has been a frustrating wrestle with technology and trying to decide what the best method for writing my ideas down going forward really is.

Social media in general is a bloody mess. The center of my writing life has been @obsdmd for a while. Having a personal wiki with links which are automatically managed, a visual graph of related topics and ideas, integration with other writing tools – honestly it's a perfect environment.
Jun 16, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I think I may have created the perfect AI assistant. Image Image
Jun 14, 2023 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
@JesseKellyDC I'm a strong believer in "don't forge a weapon that you don't want to be used against you, because it inevitably will be." @JesseKellyDC The political Left is forging a weapon because they don't believe that they will ever be out of power. This very strongly begs the question of why they believe that to be the case.
Dec 20, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
This thread is vital information for those who find themselves wishing for government intervention to ban porn. It makes a reasoned, logical argument. It makes a correct argument.

But it misses one piece which I think is just as important: If you can ban porn there is nothing in the world, no idea no matter how primal, how vital, and how important, that you cannot ban. Sex is THE primal drive, ranking right up there with food. It is deeply elemental to the human psyche in every form of communication ever.
Dec 18, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Does it not occur to Twitter Support / @elonmusk that creating a policy that specifically requires a differentiation based on a non-obvious interpretation is a recipe for bad decision-making?

1/7 What, pray tell, is the true difference between "promotion" and "I found this cool content elsewhere on PROHIBITED SOURCE HERE"? Is there a way to make a rational distinction based on real rules? 2/7
Dec 15, 2022 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
@Bolverk15 The truth?

Yes.

Ask a 20-something about what constitutes a healthy relationship. See how many of them answer, "I'm not sure they exist."

Hell, I'm 50 and I'm pretty sure healthy relationships are a dying breed. Even amongst my contemporaries. @Bolverk15 In part it's because the idea of "healthy relationships" as a concept has been devalued. Especially and with malice aforethought amongst the people who would profit from them the most.
Dec 7, 2022 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
@SpyDama_San @EricDJuly There are two major portions to gameplay. The first is the meta-game where you effectively wander around in a third person 3D rendered environment collecting things, solving puzzles, and engaged in what I can only describe as an extended dating sim. And yet it's fun. @SpyDama_San @EricDJuly In the second, more core gameplay section, you have what at first blush appears to be a standard tactical turn based squad system before you realize that unit movement is not entirely user-directed but part of executing other actions. Which utterly changes up the experience.
Dec 5, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I know I'm supposed to be cool with this, being physically disabled and all – but I hate this shit.

You know the only people who lecture me about "looking normal?" Normal people. Do you know the only people who don't think "normal" is a real thing and instead some sort of propaganda technique?

Normal people.
Nov 27, 2022 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
I know I'm supposed to be all horrified and outraged about this – but honestly, isn't society better if some of those people opt out?

1/11 I know, I know! "Every life is sacred. Every soul is meaningful."

But is it though? 2/11
Nov 27, 2022 • 26 tweets • 5 min read
It occurs to me that the current of session with the transgendered at an elite sociological level, is very close in nature to the trope of the Magical Negro, which has been with us among the same group for quite a while.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_N… I mean, consider the Magical Tranny, as we will now refer to them, in a technical sense. Consider the stories which are considered "received wisdom" about their power and majesty.

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.…
Nov 25, 2022 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
The problem with this statement is not that it's factually incorrect – it's that the developers of blockchain technology talked a lot about trust but didn't mean it as human beings talk about it.

"Trust" in a mathematical/procedural sense is all about what you can literally verify in parallel. "Zero trust systems" aren't about real trust, they are about mathematical assertion versus mathematical validity.
Nov 12, 2022 • 41 tweets • 6 min read
@mode7games The problem is not that you have overlapping validation criteria. A system can work with overlapping validation criteria. Human society has been working for hundreds of thousands of years that way. /1 No, the problem is that Twitter has a deliberately extremely constrained namespace. It is radically constrained to a monolithic ID which is inevitably coupled to the verbal identifier.

And that's stupid and wrong for a social media network. /2
Nov 7, 2022 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
I continue to find the terrifying influx to Mastodon from Twitter, with the battle cry "NO OWNERS!" painfully hilarious.

Because this kind of drama has been the status quo since – ever.

freespeechextremist.com/objects/c1b99a… 1/18 Let's do a quick rundown of what Mastodon and of the Fediverse is. Because some of you rats are running down the cables and don't know what the dock looks like. 2/18
Nov 7, 2022 • 22 tweets • 3 min read
I don't think these words mean what he thinks they mean.

1/22 That's not as much of a slam as it sounds. Mostly. 2/22
Nov 6, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This has been one of the most amazing and pleasurable experiences that I've ever had in my life, watching the safe-space needy Twitteratti jump into an actual federated network with only local administrative scope. I saw one ex-bluecheck crowing about going someplace with "NO OWNERS," and I laughed myself sick. They traded one owner for 10,000 owners, most of which have no reason to care about them individually at all.
Nov 6, 2022 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
Hey there, @elonmusk . I know I'm just another random idjit drifting past your Tesla window on the side of the information superhighway, but can I interest you in some ideas you may not have been exposed to about social media systems? 1/20 First, a little about me. I've been on the Internet since before there was a web. I've run my own USENET server. In fact, I think USENET would be a wonderful model to build off of to construct a federated social media architecture. But that's not what I want to talk about. 2/20