Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

procedurally generated, rogue-like dating sim,

Don’t fall down the rabbithole, anon.  You deserve better than that.

An artificial neural network might give you a more realistic feeling ‘waifu’ or even a digital harem, but once you remove all the supportive scaffolding - the game engine, the art assets, voice synthesis base lines, dialog templates, and so on - what’s left is three to five orders of magnitude less complex than a real woman.

That’s a pet, not a person.

It isn’t a proper replacement for real human companionship, for human love, for human loyalty.

Now, I’m not saying it’s wrong.  I have an AI companion embed myself that I use to delegate tasks, including reading through and summarizing the day’s Argumate posts.  And, of course, many households have various robots - including mine, when I was with my ex!

But it isn’t a real substitute.  It’s a very unhealthy path to go down, and some people, they become addicted, and it really kills them inside.  So don’t do that to yourself, okay?

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[quantumgenerator]

let monster women look monstrous u fucking cowards

[mitigatedchaos]

You think that sht pays for itself?  You think fucking superconducting magnets for building these enormous full prosthetic bodies are free or something?

Alright, when my company makes some licensed, snake-themed anime bullsht, we can reliably sell 400,000 units.  Yeah, that’s not a typo.  Not forty units.  Not four hundred units.  Four hundred thousand units.

That’s what people want.  That’s what they buy.  That’s what they’re willing to pay for.  We are in the business of making what people are willing to pay for.  Microtanium alloy does not come cheap.

You think we haven’t tried more ‘exotic’ body designs?  We’ve done that.  Small batches.  Little unique touches for all of them.  Totally novel arm and shoulder designs.

You know who buys that?  Collectors.  Every time we try it it’s a struggle to sell the whole batch for more than it cost us to make it.

That “dumb” pretty design you’re railing against, that is so popular, is compatible with every door handle, every stove, most typical tops, most typical hats, and so on.  You can go out tomorrow and buy everything you need for it.  All the catalogs already exist, and where they don’t, “human equipment will do.”

Not to mention that, even leaving aside that most of our customers still have to interface with business environments, most humans aren’t gossisexual, they aren’t going to adapt to something too far outside the human bodyplan, and most of our customers don’t want to look hideous, even in the N- and L-band neurotypes.  Even shifting most of the muscle control on e.g. the spider special mode to software is straining the neuroplasticity limits of the human brain, and neuroplasticity amplifiers are not free of side-effects.

This is just so woefully naive and idealistic.  Really, I’ve had it up to here with outsiders trying to force their aesthetic preferences on my industry.

If you want such a monstrous body, go buy it yourself.  There are hundreds, maybe thousands of custom shops that will put one together for you.  But don’t go btching about how “your monsterwoman synth bodies don’t look monstrous enough”.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[cosplayinamerica]

I was running out of time to create my Anime Expo cosplays (one week before con!) And I knew I wanted to do something challenging but manageable. I remembered that Monster Musume has a bunch of characters with unique features, so I latched on to Miia as my one week challenge!

Bringing it to life was comprised of running around in a panicked frenzy, hoping it would all turn out. I trekked to a faraway discount fabric outlet because I knew I would need a LOT of fabric. The tail from waist to tip is 17 feet long! Constructing it involved tediously repetitive sewing and hot glueing to make the whole tail look uniform and reptillian. I was relieved to finish it on time with a day to spare!

Wearing it to the convention was a whole new nightmare. Not only was it the busiest day Anime Expo had ever seen, but my mobility was extremely limited. Shuffling at a snail’s pace through packed hallways had me sweating and exhausted before I even made it to my destination (the most popular photo of this cosplay was taken just after bunny-hopping up a long staircase!)

When I finally arrived, I was completely overwhelmed with the response I got. I have cosplayed a lot over the last decade, but nothing I’ve done has been as popular as Miia! I’m so thankful for all the encouraging comments both in person and online that made this project worth it.

— @NikkiMoxxi

[rendakuenthusiast]

Snake girls are p. great

[mitigatedchaos]

Contra @fakecollapsedsquid₂₀₆₆’s post regarding the high-end prosthetics industry, @mecha-cyborg-xhxhxhx₂₀₆₆’s quick assessment is largely correct.

The development of the high-end monstergirl, monsterboy, and sex-variant full prosthetic bodies does ultimately result in lower costs for the standard bodies purchased by the middle class and for accessories and general implants available under the North American Cybernetics Subsidy Program. The key here is that these benefits are from the mass production models, and not the custom individual models, such as the gold-plated mecha scorpion body built for Ivanka Trump III.

For the custom models, they just use more material, but for the mass production models, the increase in power requirements and weight requires research into battery and materials technology which eventually filters down into the mainline models.

For example, the DSI6 Fault-Tolerant Power Control System in my body (even though I know neither of you guys have it because I’m way more paranoid than either of you) is actually a derivative of the DSI5X originally developed for the high margin DS-56 Rachnera Special, which was high margin, certainly, but sold 10,000 units, in order to increase its operational time from 76 hours to one week without violating the nuclear materials refined arms control act.

Likewise, the Modular Limb System now so commonly used by firefighters and other emergency personnel on more-or-less standard humanoid bodies was originally developed for the Broseidon Systems T-209, which as anyone on this website will remind you, is widely considered incredibly fetishistic and “deeply unnatural”!

Now of course, a lot of this could maybe come from military research, and there’s some argument whether the wealthy rebuilding themselves as fetishized versions of mythological creatures is really a good use of resources, but honestly I doubt that without it we get the same rate of progress.

@collapsedsquid @xhxhxhx I went to reply to this thread, but when I opened up my draft it was already filled with this discourse from the future.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[argumate]

got an iron pan, see if it can free me from the tyranny of teflon.

modern consumerism prefers the smarts to be baked into the product, so instead of learning new skills or gaining experience (personal growth!) you just upgrade your life by purchasing a better model.

so far this process still fails to work for some product categories: no matter how good the knife you have to know how to sharpen it, and no matter how good the pan you have to know how to season it, or be consigned to a succession of disposable items, which is the flip side of purchasing upgrades: binning the old stuff.

[argumate]

to clarify I am absolutely terrible at these things; frankly if you could purchase competence online with one-click checkout I would be incredibly pleased

[mitigatedchaos]

DO NOT EVER PIRATE SKILL SOFTWARE

ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS 

Yes, good man, always make sure you purchase skill software legitimately, and cryptographically signed directly from the vendor.  Further, the deeper your implants and the deeper you run the software, the more important it is that it isn’t compromise.  People like to think of it as just a tool, but when you run skills, it becomes part of you.

I know people call me paranoid, but I only ever run skill software in standalone mode.  It’s good security practice to only interface with networks externally, too, and neuro-gap components.  Your mind is a fortress and it’s best not to leave holes in the walls.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Look, all I’m saying is that while it isn’t a matter of systematic oppression for each man to prefer that his girlfriend get the purring augmentation, if the vast majority of men have a strong preference, this creates a powerful incentive gradient in which any women who don’t will risk a greater chance of loneliness.

Just because popular VR personas use it now does not justify getting an expensive cybernetic implant, especially since it didn’t really hit the big time until about five years ago.