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#1
Roleplay / AVftS: A General Assembly
Last post by Luca - March 20, 2024, 01:25:05 AM
"Kaegan, wait up for a minute, my shoe got caught on a leaf," Rizali said, attempting to catch up. The pair had been wandering for at least several minutes after what they'd come to call "The Scottish Incident," and were now, as ever, in the woods. The leaf Rizali had caught their foot upon was one of significant size and mass, at least the size of three leaves. No, four.

"You can't fool me again, shapeshifter," said Kaegan who had unstuck Lyndh from Rizali posing as a leaf on more than one occasion. Walking through the eternal and endless forest was sure starting to feel less like a figure of speech from unambitious explorers and more like a literal description handed out by more knowledgeable individuals with every passing moment. Fallen branches and foliage passed under foot, but still the forest found the capacity to give way to more.

"This would be easier if you," Rizali grunted as their cloak caught on another branch, "just took some time to enjoy this. You refused to do the alphabet game, which would have been easy enough, so I have to find something entertaining to do." The alphabet game, of course, involved finding each letter in the 84-character Ustendellian alphabet in order on various leaves they passed. It seemed like it would be easy enough, but no, it couldn't be done. So here they were, sticking to each other like leaves on shoes.

"Enjoy...enjoy...enjoy," Kaegan said. With every word, he gestured dramatically towards a piece of flora that they were passing as they walked. He paused in front of the trunk of a particularly large tree and stared up at it with arms raised: "I am expressing enjoyment. Tree."

"Tree!" said the tree.

"What the shit." Kaegan found himself having said. Well that was certainly odd.

"Kaegan, what's that over there?" Riza asked, having just caught up. They grasped to his arm and pointed to a nearby clearing, where people could be seen. Just as the people became visible, their voices became audible as well, proclaiming and loudly continuing on at length about something or other. Rizali started walking closer, hoping to make out what they were saying, barely hearing as the tree joyfully repeated, "Shit!"

Kaegan moved closer to the clearing. The people were dressed in all-white drapery, standing on various stone steps within a small amphitheatre half-buried within the ground, and leaning against stone columns half destroyed by time and weather. "It looks like some guys in bathrobes," he concluded.

Rizali nodded, "I agree, they're also speaking no language I've ever heard." One by one, each of the draperied individuals were speaking with wild gesticulations and increasing amounts of drama. It was all very big and extra, and unfortunately also very... "Time to boogie," said Rizali, who stepped into the clearing. "Hello, sorry for interrupting, I hope I haven't taken away from your big... whatever this is, I just wanted to ask for some directions. I'm Rizali."

"Τι στο διάολο?" came the response from one of the individuals on the steps

Kaegan blinked for a moment and continued a blank stare. One of the larger and balder individuals walked forward, his hands outstretched and menacing. His thumb landing in the middle of Kaegan and Rizali's brow, and his tubular fingers wrapping all the way around the back of their heads. There seemed then to be a distant metallic gong sound, followed by the quiet ambiance of the forest.

"Your evolution has now been augmented, and you can comprehend the great wonder which is the Greek tongue," said the bathrobed man. "I am Nikon," said the bathrobed man whose name was now Nikon.

"What the shit." Kaegan found himself saying again.

"Σκατά!" said the tree.

"Yes, very good, all according to plan," said Rizali, who had planned none of this and was increasingly concerned by the minute. They nodded to reaffirm this. They'd never heard of this Greek tongue, which made sense because they also hadn't recognised the words when they were being said.

"We have been debating, a classical tradition dating back millennia. It is truly the highest class of activity."

"What have you been debating?" asked Rizali, immediately regretting the question as it came out of their mouth.

"Why is it a table? Is it a table because we call it a table or is there some intrinsic table quality that makes a mere board a table? Or has it convinced us through the power of spirits that it wishes to be called a table?"

"Mephistopheles had just finished laying down a counterargument that the table, itself, has no care for what we call it, and therefore there is no sense or reason for it to be a table, indistinguishable from any other horizontal plane," said Nikon.

"It's bullshit!" interrupted someone from the back of the crowd.

"Yes, quite so," Nikon resumed "I should adequately restate that Mephistopheles has most recently just finished losing and failing to convince in his final defence of this lost cause he has championed."

Mephistopheles- or at least, who Rizali assumed was Mephistopheles- interrupted at this point. "I concede that I was unable to convince you all that the language we use imparts meaning upon objects. But isn't there more debate to be had, more nuance to introduce, more facts brought to bear? Perhaps that which holds us back in our debate is not merely the facts, but the form."

"The form?" asked Nikon and Rizali at the same time. Nikon shuddered.

"Yes, to properly gauge all aspects of this topic of debate, we must not limit ourselves in dialogue to this, the language we all understand to be the greatest thing to ever be created and that ever will be created. But now, we must reassess this topic in the second greatest language to ever be created or that ever will be created. In doing this, we will be able to consider with new eyes and new ears those things that might have been lost upon us before."

"You don't mean-" said Nikon.

"I do!" said Mephistopheles. "We must hold this debate again.


...

In Latin."

"No!" screamed Rizali, who had also never heard of Latin. But at this point they were invested and didn't want to be touched by the giant hands again to learn yet another language.

"Very well," said Nikon. "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum..."

"Kaegan, run!" Rizali yelled, and fled from the scene.
#2
The Admin Tower / CalRef Development Journal 44
Last post by Luca - March 13, 2024, 06:36:53 PM
Why Is Recruitment Missing?

Sure, happy to explain. Also welcome to the forum.



     Reason #1: Dot isn't really a recruitment bot, and that's not why Dot exists.

This is a decision that I have been wrestling with since...I don't really know when. I'd say the latest possible beginning was Mayish 2022 when I took a review of the commands used in the last thirty days and found that the top two commands were used more than the next thirty seven, and recruit made up over half of those two. Before that I had no idea when commands were used, what commands were popular, which ones were flops, and (most disturbing to Discord) no way to know if someone were abusing my commands. So I added usage collection and later reported this in the version command. At the time I added them, the top command was recruit. Also at the time I added them, I thought that would change at points. It did not.

My goals for 2023 were to dethrone recruit as the most-used command, and I planned to do this by really going to town on adding new commands and really sprucing up the ones that already existed -- giving them new capabilities and analytics. So now there are 61 commands and some that allow you to look through twelve years of almost every imaginable metric of NationStates record, with visual graphs, trends, and events. This was a shitton of work, and unfortunately this impacted usage almost not at all. Recruit is down from where it peaked at 46 per cent of all commands used in the last 30 days, but almost exactly where it was two years ago at 34 per cent of total, and that's just very sad.

I feel like this is a big reason why I've lost motivation to work on Dot, which I have worked pretty hard on for years. Irrespective of graphics and documentation, there's over 750KB of raw hand-written python and about 2 per cent of that is the recruit command. Yet Dot is know for being the recruitment bot, and any other services Dot could provide will probably always be overshadowed by that.


     Reason #2: Manual is less effective now, and that's partially my fault.



Dot's documentation page mentions how she went from being in one server of 50 people to 300 servers of some thousands. And this probably comes across like a humblebrag, but really what it's meant to convey is my abject horror. Dot went through a lot of command rewrites in v3.0 and v3.1, and a lot of it was dealing with Dot's explosive growth axe-murdering my server. But 34 per cent remember? Now there's literally hundreds of servers which are using this system (maybe not all at the same time), but collectively hundreds more servers are popping in and out of Dot recruitment with six to ten going at any given time, raising the competition for all. Included amongst those new recruiters were, bizarrely, feeders which the command was never intended to benefit.

It is less effective than ever to use Dot's recruitment because it has become a relative baseline for manual. This means that it is, ironically, now less effective than going fully manual. One alternative is hammering the API right at the ratelimit to get new nations the picosecond they come out, but I'm not really interested in pursuing that line of development. The fact is that timing only gets you so far; at the end of the day, some nations just aren't going to be buying what you're selling. Also, I couldn't even pursue it if I wanted to because Hydrogen already makes a ton of requests to NationStates to service other commands and software.


     Reason #3: More of a detriment than a benefit.


There's a whole bunch of people out there who spend an inordinate amount of time hating my living guts. This is fine, but it does raise an interesting question of the ethics of decrying my evil in public, but continue to benefit from my work in private. I guess that's not my problem so much. The ethical question for me is should one continue to benefit people and organisations that simultaneously attempt to erode your reputation and public trust? I think the ultimate answer is "no", but I have vowed to uphold Refugi values as Arch-Admin of Calref, and I consider free and public access to tools and software to be one of those non-negotiable values. It's why I opened it up to the public in the first place instead of retaining it as an exclusive tool for myself.

So the lights have stayed on, and stayed equally on as long as I thought the command was good to have around. Now that I no longer believe the command is good to have around, the lights can also be equally off. Ultimately, I just don't want to run the command anymore, but hopefully some good came from the three years that it was around.

#3
General Discussion / Re: The Welcoming Committee
Last post by Beet - March 10, 2024, 06:05:22 AM
Remembered that I haven't done this yet so

Hi, I'm Beet, my pronouns are it/its and she/her, and I 'ike animals and worldbuilding and making art.
I 'ive in the UK of GB+NI, and am, in fact, a gay demigirl *gasp*
and uhhhh- yeah, that's a reasonable base'ine of information

For future reference and convenience: I have a speech impediment that's why I'll type funky around Ls
#4
Spam / Re: Name a type of pancake
Last post by dengopaiv - February 11, 2024, 11:07:32 AM
Electric eel
#5
General Discussion / Re: The CalRef Recipe Book
Last post by Nakari - February 01, 2024, 01:37:55 PM
https://www.glutarama.com/dairy-free-baileys-recipe/

I used this recipe today to make vegan Bailey's and it SLAPS SEVERELY.

Notes: I used 500ml of oat milk instead of any cream, and the texture is pretty good. Could have used some cream but wouldn't be worth it for how little it would need. I'd add a bit less whiskey though. It may be a TINY bit strong. Maybe 200ml instead of 250.
#6
The Admin Tower / Re: This Message Brought to Yo...
Last post by Luca - January 07, 2024, 06:38:38 PM
Greetings,

The transitional council's timeline has now been concluded. Old URLs will no longer route traffic or process requests, and all old email addresses have been terminated. All sites and services are functioning well under the new calref.ca scheme. If you find anything broken from this point forward, check if it's going to the right calref.ca address, and please correct it or notify someone to correct it if it is not so.
#7
General Discussion / Re: The CalRef Recipe Book
Last post by Nakari - January 06, 2024, 10:57:02 AM
Pilau rice is surprisingly easy to make so I'm gonna post recipe here.

1. Wash and drain ur rice. However much u want for ur meal.
2. Optional: fry an onion.
3. Put rice in pot. Put oil in pot. Fry the rice with spices. I used let's say half a teaspoon of pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, garlic powder, salt, coriander, fennel seeds. Lots of turmeric, like a tablespoon maybe. Stir it up until all the rice is yellow and coated with spice and it smells nice and toasty.
4. Pour in however much water cooks ur rice amount. Add some chicken stock if you're feeling spicy.
5. Cook it however long you cook ur rice. Idk all rice is different ur the expert on your own rice.
6. The rice will taste so good I am literally just eating spoonfuls of it.
#8
General Discussion / Re: The CalRef Recipe Book
Last post by Catherine - January 01, 2024, 03:42:57 AM
Nice vegan pancakes that we had for breakfast this morning!

https://girleatsworld.co.uk/oat-milk-pancakes/
#9
General Discussion / Re: The Welcoming Committee
Last post by EnnaSystem - December 26, 2023, 01:08:57 AM
[deleted]
#10
Refugia / Re: [draft] Thesis 2: Coherenc...
Last post by Emily - November 27, 2023, 06:56:28 PM
Based.