Rant 627 / Six To Seven

We won. My team won. This is one of the most absurd victories I've ever seen. The other team conceded when we pushed the middle lane all the way to their barracks.

I highlighted the main reasons why we should have lost. Our highest level was their lowest at 12. They even had a level 20, twice my level!

This is why you should not rage quit or concede until your opponents are hitting the towers next to your shrine.

Oh yea, this screenshot also shows how badly I suck.













Online sarcasm really doesn't work very well. IRL sarcasm frequently depends on a certain tone of voice and, sometimes, a facial expression. The main component is always an absurd statement.

But on the Internet, the first two have to be sacrificed in text messages, which is the most common medium of interaction online. Worse, the absurd can very well be nothing strange because of the different backgrounds of the users, causing the sarcasm to be lost. Furthermore, there are times when the absurd just isn't absurd enough because the person making the sarcastic remark has not encountered anything even more absurd while the listener/reader has.

This makes sarcasm hard to convey online. In the worst case scenario, it can backfire and make you look stupid without you knowing it because they are too polite to give you honest feedback.

Of course with sufficient wit, one can always accomplish that without having to announce that one was being sarcastic in the previous comment. The problem is that most people don't possess that level of expertise in the field of wittiness, hence we get forum comments that end with clauses like "/sarcasm", which IMO is rather inept and awkward.

The problem I often find in players trying to be sarcastic with new players is that that is an extremely poor situation to use sarcasm in.

To appreciate the absurdity of a statement, you need to know what is normal. A new player in a game has no idea what the norm is, therefore any sarcastic remark based on the game will have no meaning to them, especially if you're typing it out.

For example, telling newbies to do exactly what the other newbies are doing wrong in an attempt to use sarcasm to be mean to them is just going to make you look like a moron when they learn that you were full of shit. Some may realize you were just being sarcastic, but don't count on that.













During my first class for the module "Introduction to Chinese Linguistics", I learnt that I know jack shit about 漢語拼音.

First of all, I never knew that you're supposed to write the 拼音 according to the phrase. For example, for "拼音" the correct way of writing its 拼音 is "pinyin" and of course with the proper strokes to denote the tone that I cannot enter here (and too lazy to find the Unicode for).

Second, there are 3 "i"s, namely the usual "i" in "yi" (意), the "-i" in "zhi" (之) and the "-i" in "zi" (子). The second is described as "舌尖後的元音", the third is "舌尖前的元音" because you pronounce the "-i" in 之 from behind the tip of your tongue while you pronounce the "-i" in 子 in front of the tip of your tongue.

In short the three are:
1) i
2) -i (前)
3) -i (後)

Third, in 漢語拼音 there are categories like "韻頭", "韻母", "韻尾" and "聲母". 聲母 = consonants except for "y" and "w", 韻母 = vowels. If I go any further I'll have to type in Chinese.













Aliens are disabling nukes!

In some cases, several nuclear missiles simultaneously and inexplicably malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object silently hovered nearby.

One of them, ICBM launch officer Captain Robert Salas, was on duty during one missile disruption incident at Malmstrom Air Force Base and was ordered to never discuss it.

It may be aliens, or it may be that certain wealthy countries are in possession of technologies for disabling ICBMs, and that the countries these witnesses are from (eg US, UK) are aware of this but do not want this information to spread lest the show of force that these nukes provide are rendered obsolete.

After all, if these ICBMs can be disabled just by sending one of those machines to fly over them, they are pretty much useless. And what can the Americans rely on if their trump card is known to be a white elephant?













We don't really want the yuan to appreciate. I know I don't. My family depends on the low yuan for a living. It goes up, the goods we import get expensive, our profits go down because we can't raise the prices as suddenly as the yuan does.

Even China doesn't want the yuan to rise. Only the Americans do. The thing is that the yuan is not an American currency.













The president of Iran is mad. Going to the UN to talk about 9/11 conspiracies is about as useful as going to a mosque and telling them that a lot of people think that the Bible is right.

I have no idea what he is trying to do here. Is there like some kind of competition between him and Kim Jong Il?













My mum's workers are so free, they're actually volunteering to do the heavy work. I was supposed to go on Sat (technically today since it's 12.19am) to help her arrange the new batch of cardboard boxes. In the past, my mum has always told me they would whine whenever they have to lift heavy stuff, so this is pretty amazing.

Anyway they are free only because the business is slowing down, eventually to a halt. Everyone has to retire eventually, including our parents.















I want one of those. With the world economy always fluctuating in recent decades and gold prices going only in one constant direction, this is the modern version of our grandparents' habit of storing their cash in boxes. Instead of cash, we can store gold bars in a biscuit box now.

And we also get a weapon if you stick enough cash into the vending machine. A large brick can easily kill someone and give them a nice gold-plated fatal head wound in the process. Not exactly a bad way to go, but I'd prefer something less violent when my time comes :P

Want a gold-plated bathroom? Just get a few gold bars and a hammer. It's not very hard to make thin slices of gold.