When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925) in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. The German government had prohibited Germans from accepting or keeping any Nobel Prize after jailed peace activist Carl von Ossietzky had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. De Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation. They re-cast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck.

pwnd nazi scum

swampman posted:

From topic vgchat / gender theory thread:
people who play videogames are scum

swampman posted:

From topic vgchat / gender theory thread:

Transient_Grace posted:

Let's not laugh at others for how they spend their time and moneys ok crocodile dundee?

I don't laugh at them. I shed a single tear of sadness in mourning for the human lifes they are wasting, their own. When a friend or person's playing a video game, to me, it's like they temporarily committed suicide. And that is really sad, to a great degree.

tears posted:

Actually i agree, video games are a waste of time, now, back to watching the young popw

Hey.

karphead posted:

i'll just drop this aqua regia anecdote here i guess

When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925) in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. The German government had prohibited Germans from accepting or keeping any Nobel Prize after jailed peace activist Carl von Ossietzky had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. De Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation. They re-cast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck.

pwnd nazi scum

i would have drunk the aqua regia with dissolved gold in it i bet it would make me feel epic.

tears posted:

the big problem i have with video games is the lack of dresses to wear, most games dont even have one dress in them, let alone a selection of dresses in different cuts and styles to be swapped out according to the situation. this is a major deal breaker for me, video game developers who are reading this: please include more dresses tia

truly...the greatest game

Belphegor posted:

After watching that video I have absolutely zero problems with video games being banned and incinerated after the revolution

same but also i don't really understand why this is worse than movies or television or novels or comic books or pop music, all of which come from the same group of degenerate pigs

cars posted:

Mark Fisher, rip in peace, talked about depressive hedonia, which i think ties right in to the question of reward schedules raised by swampman and how gambling (the original meaning of "gaming") has been successfully divorced from any hope of receiving wage equivalents for time spent and money "invested".

I offer that linked article with at least as many caveats as recommendations, for a couple reasons. First, a brief education in the medieval will show you that university instructors have been offering the same complaints about their students—they're always distracted, they're ill-prepared, they don't understand their actions now will have consequences later—since the very beginning of the university as an institution and probably before, so I never put much stock in crude reasoning that ties those common characteristics of young minds to social trends. At least the medievals could claim to believe the entire universe and all of society were degrading as a matter of ontology. I can sympathize with desperate teachers prone to overactive rationalization but it doesn't amount to much usually and what's more, it's lame as hell.

Second, anything and anyone that takes the concept of "generations" seriously should always be treated as suspect, as this concept serves only two parties: pseudo-scientific marketing/business-writer swindlers shilling books, seminars and thinkpieces with constantly shifting diagnoses of each supposed "generation", and systems of discipline that act to prevent class solidarity by dividing class segments along arbitrary lines of identity. I remain amazed by the otherwise bright leftist minds content to smear themselves in this liberal Buzzfeed horseshit, especially Mark Fisher who was famous for attacks on facile identity politics, since it's exactly what they decry elsewhere: lazy reification of common traits among all people under current conditions, projected out onto the young, the middle-aged, the elderly, an endless cry of "but not me!" You'd think the 2016 election would put paid to it especially, as the oldest man ever elected to the office of President of the United States exhibits the traits normally assigned to "Millennials" by said horseshit and was put there largely by people associated with the post-war baby boom. We're all in the same world.

But the overall concept of depressive hedonia is useful here, and what I'd add given those caveats above is: the condition appears in everyone of every "generation" in Western society, and as video game industry writers love to brag, video games are popular among every "generation" now, the only difference being the type of games they play, a purely surface difference based on that same arbitrary market segmentation.

Agreed with all of this with the caveat that dark souls is actually the crowning achievement of the human species to date.

Keven posted:

cars posted:

Mark Fisher, rip in peace, talked about depressive hedonia, which i think ties right in to the question of reward schedules raised by swampman and how gambling (the original meaning of "gaming") has been successfully divorced from any hope of receiving wage equivalents for time spent and money "invested".

I offer that linked article with at least as many caveats as recommendations, for a couple reasons. First, a brief education in the medieval will show you that university instructors have been offering the same complaints about their students—they're always distracted, they're ill-prepared, they don't understand their actions now will have consequences later—since the very beginning of the university as an institution and probably before, so I never put much stock in crude reasoning that ties those common characteristics of young minds to social trends. At least the medievals could claim to believe the entire universe and all of society were degrading as a matter of ontology. I can sympathize with desperate teachers prone to overactive rationalization but it doesn't amount to much usually and what's more, it's lame as hell.

Second, anything and anyone that takes the concept of "generations" seriously should always be treated as suspect, as this concept serves only two parties: pseudo-scientific marketing/business-writer swindlers shilling books, seminars and thinkpieces with constantly shifting diagnoses of each supposed "generation", and systems of discipline that act to prevent class solidarity by dividing class segments along arbitrary lines of identity. I remain amazed by the otherwise bright leftist minds content to smear themselves in this liberal Buzzfeed horseshit, especially Mark Fisher who was famous for attacks on facile identity politics, since it's exactly what they decry elsewhere: lazy reification of common traits among all people under current conditions, projected out onto the young, the middle-aged, the elderly, an endless cry of "but not me!" You'd think the 2016 election would put paid to it especially, as the oldest man ever elected to the office of President of the United States exhibits the traits normally assigned to "Millennials" by said horseshit and was put there largely by people associated with the post-war baby boom. We're all in the same world.

But the overall concept of depressive hedonia is useful here, and what I'd add given those caveats above is: the condition appears in everyone of every "generation" in Western society, and as video game industry writers love to brag, video games are popular among every "generation" now, the only difference being the type of games they play, a purely surface difference based on that same arbitrary market segmentation.

Agreed with all of this with the caveat that dark souls is actually the crowning achievement of the human species to date.

pleasedontbeirony pleasedontbeirony pleasedontbeirony

toyotathon posted:

business structures of mobile gaming

I once attended a neuromarketing/behavioral economics conference; depressing dark side shit. This kinda research is basically what underpins most considerations regarding UX and in-game economy design which are intended to make the business profitable. The ethics in this field are a joke. I suspect many free to play games marketed to children are also actively used for experimentation/data collection/priming in addition to serving pop-up ads that redirect to pay-to-play. Although they can still get around using children as subjects in academia where they study interaction/UX "for education", but the same knowledge can easily be monetized in games/platforms.

The common practice of giving infants/children tablets and phones to play with is likely going to permanently stunt their ability to engage with the world. The interaction paradigms of these devices are based on physical reality, so they are intuitive to us when we interact with them, yet in the case of young minds they are often learning this abstraction before the physical reality on which it's based. Fuck knows how these backward humans will see the world as adults, from birth more comfortable with experiencing the world through platforms and devices, their entire framework of perception defined by algorithmic and corporate whim.

I heard a terrible story from someone of how they observed a toddler at an aquarium looking at some fish while repeatedly doing the pinch and zoom action on the tank glass. The people designing and hawking this shit know where it's leading which is why they increasingly are sending their children to private silicon valley schools where they explicitly do not use tech.

Gssh posted:

The common practice of giving infants/children tablets and phones to play with is likely going to permanently stunt their ability to engage with the world. The interaction paradigms of these devices are based on physical reality, so they are intuitive to us when we interact with them, yet in the case of young minds they are often learning this abstraction before the physical reality on which it's based. Fuck knows how these backward humans will see the world as adults, from birth more comfortable with experiencing the world through platforms and devices, their entire framework of perception defined by algorithmic and corporate whim.

I heard a terrible story from someone of how they observed a toddler at an aquarium looking at some fish while repeatedly doing the pinch and zoom action on the tank glass. The people designing and hawking this shit know where it's leading which is why they increasingly are sending their children to private silicon valley schools where they explicitly do not use tech.

(since this is a slightly separate topic i want to reply in this new post)

i've done some reading - not as much as i'd like - and looking-for-reading on topics like this. there are studies i've seen that show the empathic response in people is dulled by "virtual reality" (i'm using this to include the new modern VR but also tunnel-visioning into your desktop-laptop for extended periods of time) in a way that looks -- and appears in various tests -- the same as people with ptsd, people with diagnosed depersonalization disorders / dissociative spectrum problems. (this might sound so obvious as to be trite but it is not an accepted thing afaik and the only good studies i remember reading were from one University of Montreal subdepartment.)

if we all end up dissociative (and programmable, as in the last post), it does not bode well for elections, or really anything else. otoh we are probably already there.

anyway i'm going to go back to playing video games alone now

marimite posted:

marimite posted:

A Brazilian guy told me today that where he's from a PS4 is 4 thousand dollars. A good way to explain imperialism is the difference in the price of fuel and electronics between the third and first world. "whoa what's up with that difference" "well you see your rapebox and your rapestation and your Wii require a global production line to be made, which is maintained by rape and are actually electronic drugs used to desensitize you to rape" and then they're convinced that Invincible Mao Thought is real and love you forever.

Edit: Should clarify that's Brazilian dollars.

Well it's just 1500 Reais now and the Switch is a mere 2500 so the free market prevails again.