Racial bioessentialism is a core design crutch for Dungeons & Dragons. Across fifty years of tabletop roleplaying games, multiple novels, supplements, and additional tie-ins, D&D has continually established monolithic culture building as part of its lore. The alignment charts that Gary Gygax (and many designers)…
Tan Bu De Sheng (贪不得胜) - The greedy do not get success Ru Jie Yi Huan (入界宜缓) - Be unhurried to enter opponent´s territory Gong Bi Gu Wo (攻彼顾我) - Take care of oneself when attacking the other Qi Zi Zheng Xian (弃子争先) - Discard a stone to gain sente She Xiao Jiu Da (舍小就大) - Abandon small to save big Feng Wei Xu Qi (逢危须弃)…
Any disciplinary power that expends effort to force human beings into a straitjacket of commandments and prohibitions proves inefficient. It is significantly more efficient to ensure that people subordinate themselves to domination on their own. The efficacy defining the system today stems from the fact that, instead…
Personal growth is about figuring things out and gaining experience, not hoarding knowledge. An attitude that promotes discovering the new and the valuable is far more important. Thus, your tactics and strategy should always be changing and evolving. Adopt fresh tactics regularly to replace your old ones. Today is…
Surprisingly (to economists, anyway), even though these communities remain decimated, many people have still refused to leave them. Autor, Dorn and Hanson find that it was only foreign-born workers and native workers ages 25 to 39 who were likely to leave. Everyone else basically stayed, even if the economic rug was…
Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He…
I find these singular precepts opposed to nature and contrary to reason: they needs must multiply the number of crimes and continually annoy the old workman, who has made everything without the help of head, hands, or tools, who exists everywhere and is to be seen nowhere; who endures to-day and to-morrow and is never…
If there is a perverse man who could take offense at the praise that I give to the most noble and universal of passions, I would evoke Nature before him, I would make it speak, and Nature would say to him: why do you blush to hear the word pleasure pronounced, when you do not blush to indulge in its temptations under…
Then leave Complaints: Fools only strive To make a Great an honest Hive. T’ enjoy the World’s Conveniencies, Be famed in War, yet live in Ease Without great Vices, is a vain Eutopia seated in the Brain. Fraud, Luxury, and Pride must live Whilst we the Benefits receive. Hunger’s a dreadful Plague, no doubt, Yet who…
Nothing is more uncertain than the life span of individual man; very few men reach old age. The greatest risks are incurred at the beginning of life: the less we have lived the less we may expect to live. Of the children that are born half at most grow to adolescence; thus it is probable that your pupil will not…
1. He that has not a mastery over his inclinations, he that knows not how to resist the importunity of present pleasure or pain, for the sake of what reason tells him is fit to be done, wants the true principle of virtue and industry; and is in danger of never being good for any thing. This temper, therefore, so…
At the foot of the mountain, pure water flowed from a spring, falling by various cascades; twelve men dressed as mountaineers, armed with pikes and with civic crowns on their heads, were hidden in caverns in the mountain; as the procession arrived, singing the last couplet of the Marseillaise, the mountaineers quietly…
I had long before remarked that, in relation to practice, it is sometimes necessary to adopt, as if above doubt, opinions which we discern to be highly uncertain, as has been already said; but as I then desired to give my attention solely to the search after truth, I thought that a procedure exactly the opposite was…
It is asked, what motives an Atheist can have to do good? The motive to please himself and his fellow-creatures; to live happily and peaceably; to gain the affection and esteem of men. "Can he, who fears not the gods, fear any thing?" He can fear men; he can fear contempt, dishonour, the punishment of the laws; in…
Back then, many theorists believed that a progressive reduction of work time was the inevitable byproduct of mechanization and increased efficiency. Even John M. Keynes, noted father of modern mass-consumption economics, argued in 1931 that, within two generations, industry would satisfy the real needs of humanity and…
In part, adults feared youth leisure because it symbolized rapid change and the inability of parents to control the culture of their o1spring, which seemed to be dominated by commercial entertainment. Commercialized youth leisure grew impressively during and after World War II. Parents away as soldiers or o1 at work…
Love your beloved classics now—because even now, few people read them, for the most part, and fewer still love them. In a century, they’ll probably be forgotten by all but a few eccentrics. If it makes you feel any better, all fiction, even the books people love and rush to buy in droves, is subject to entropy…
It is now common—and I use the word “common” in its every sense—to see interviews with up-and-coming young movie stars whose parents or even grandparents were themselves movie stars. And when the interviewer asks, “Did you find it an advantage to be the child of a major motion-picture star?” the answer is invariably…
The problem comes when the database and the engine go from )ach to oracle. It happens quite often that I will ask one of the students about a move from one of their games, and why he made it. If the move comes early on, the answer is almost always, "Because that's the nain line." That is, that's the theoretical move…
Paradoxically, when other top players wrote about games in magazines and newspaper columns they often made more mistakes in their commentary than the players had made at the board. Even when the players themselves published analyses of their own games they were often less accurate than when they were playing the game…