The Transient is a rare(ish) spawn in the latter stages of the game. He has a ton of HP (999), does a ton of damage unless you hit him a few times, and disappears after around five turns. In other words, he is a late stag DPS race that you cannot exactly plan for.
It was fun chasing beating him at first, but I quickly realized I was going to need to get lucky and get a series of cards/items that would allow me to burst him down rather quickly. There was no poison stacking or defense stacking. Burst or fail only.
That kind of idea mostly works for this kind of game, but it was always going to be a letdown achievement for me. It requires no thought or strategy. Building toward taking out The Transient is no different from “building a deck that will beat the last boss”. The only difference is the degree to how quickly it beats the last boss or, in this case, a five turn race.
Other than the achievement, there wasn’t even a reward. I had hoped there would be a unique item or card to go along with it but no. You unlock the achievement outside the game and then you move on to steamrolling the true final boss.
And now I am done or done enough. I am 20 hours shy of 500 total logged for the game. I am sure I will poke my head in from time to time to see what any new updates bring. Hopefully they bring more and better achievements. Something that requires strategy or cunning or a different kind of luck.
When it comes to game achievements, I just want them to be a bit more or at least fun in their own right. That’s rarely the case though. If they are too easy, then they are meaningless. If they are too hard, then they are usually too focused on luck or grinding. Beyond that, they are rarely worth looking at unless the game itself is truly special. 
I have no patience to play lesser games to trivial ends.
Picture a younger me in the earliest days of pursuing a degree in philosophy. I was hungrier then. Growing up in the Deep South, religion’s hold always slipped off my like a greased pig. When I finally “escaped” to the first university I attended, I thought I was going to find more like minded friends or that I would finally get out of my shell to show the world who I was on the inside. Instead, I found more of the same and with that realization my first exposure to honest depression. It was a chance elective that exposed me to philosophy when none of my education before had even tried. In that chance, I began to find my way out.
Introduction to why I followed philosophy complete, let’s move on to one of my favorite philosophical ideas that I frequently reference when I make decisions: American philosopher John Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance.
We can argue practicality for society another day. I love this idea for its practical value in my every day decision-making as a leader and manager at my job. I often have to make policy and procedure decisions, either by crafting new ones, rewriting old ones, or enforcing what is in place. Too often the debates regarding changes become bogged down in catering to every individual in our employ on an individual needs basis and we lose sight of establishing a baseline.
The idea and language behind the veil of ignorance helps me better convey that we need to make decisions based on the most neutral of employees if we want to write rules or make team-wide decisions. As an example, just because two of our workers are always late does not mean we need to redefine what “being late” means.
This doesn’t mean that I am the hard-headed type who doesn’t allow for exceptions. Using the same example, maybe they are always late because of issues getting their children to school/babysitter/daycare, etc. I am more than happy to work out ways to accommodate these situations, whenever possible, as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of hours worked, coverage, or productivity. Also, as long as I cannot make the same accommodations for others.
The veil of ignorance thought experiment also helps inform me with equality/feminist concerns. Rather than use the tired “I also have a mother/daughter/sister/female relative” trope when it comes to relating to issues specific to women in our society, I do the far simpler and more human thing of imagining myself in the same situation.
Would I want less pay? Would I want to be sexually harassed? Would I want no time to recover my body or tend to a new child after giving birth? Obviously the answer to all of these questions is no. Taking things a step further, if I were to attempt to answer the same questions from an original position behind a veil of ignorance where I have a 50/50 chance of being a female member of the society I am helping to design, then the answer is “HELL NO”. Fairness and equality are pretty simple, everyone.
Of course, where most thought experiments breakdown is when you apply them too broadly or to a society already too far out of balance. The /r/fantasy board has had a recent community-wide debate about inclusiveness and the author (whom I agreed with) unfortunately used bad statistics in an ignorant way to muddy his own points and their validity.
When it comes to my fantasy reading list, which is absolutely dominated by white male authors, if I were try to apply the more politically-oriented veil of ignorance thought experiment, I would likely read only those books of merit. However, since finding books of merit is always through the lens of “you will see books by white male authors first and foremost because they are most plentiful and popular”, then it falls on me to find ways to look beyond what I only see for its lowest common denominator popularity. That way I am not missing any really good books by authors who just don’t get the same traction because of difficulties marketing their name, face, or because their version of fantasy is not in the exact mold that publishers expect their audiences to purchase.
That doesn’t mean I think white male authors are inherently worse or that human beings are not capable of writing characters unlike themselves, it just means that I value originality and fresh perspectives and that both are hard to find in the nth book by someone who really, really, really loved Tolkien.
Don’t take this post as a: you should know/use the veil of ignorance. The great thing about humans is our diversity of thinking. You may also think philosophy is a crock of shit, to which I most humbly disagree. For me, this is exactly what I needed back in my early 20’s: a way to see the world fairly, humanely, and how I ought work toward it being. More broadly speaking, that’s what brought me to philosophy, why I still read about philosophy, and why I never shy away anymore from talking about it even as I see the other party’s eyes roll.
During the recent Prime Day sale, I finally purchased a sous vide device from Amazon. In my family I tend to be the gadget king. I also tend to be the “gourmet”. A device that combines eccentric gadgetry and pretentious gourmet foodiness? Nothing could fit that bill more than sous vide.
If you aren’t familiar, a sous vide device is essentially a combined water heater/water circulator that allows you to hold a body of water at a precise temperature for an extremely prolonged period of time. When combined with food in airtight plastic, it combines slow cooking and boiling food to essentially cook something without any part of it evaporating or cooking unevenly.
In other words, it is supposed to make a damn good steak.
And it does. I bought the ChefSteps Joule Sous Vide and it seems to work incredibly well. It feels like an alien way of cooking food, especially given the fact that there are no buttons or controls on the device. Instead, I do everything within a required app on my phone.
I didn’t go all out yet. I don’t have the vacuum sealer for the plastics, but Ziplocs have worked fine thus far. I also don’t have a specialized container since my stock pot has plenty of room. Despite how complicated it can seem and expensive to get everything you will need for this newer means of cooking food, the damn thing works fine with just a pot of water.
My results thus far have been mostly good. I did a roast, steaks, and ribs. I have yet to be blown away like I had hoped since sous vide has some real evangelists out there, but I don’t feel like I wasted my money either. All three were tender.
More importantly, despite the outrageous cook times (24 hours for the ribs), I feel like the real selling point for me thus far is worrying less about cleanup (slow cooker) or having to rush home to heat up the oven and apartment. With planning, I should be able to augment my normal weekly and daily routines to incorporate using the sous vide for safely preparing proteins for later consumption with minimal effort and attention.
My sous vide is no Instant Pot. It has not revolutionized my cooking routine nor is it something I would witness to others so they may accept it into their lives. It is pretty damn cool though and for the first time in a long time it has me excited to get back into the kitchen, less as a culinary artist, and more as a beef cooking mad scientist.
Also, the ribs were delicious and I didn’t have to go outside to grill them. Win-fucking-win.
My Gamespace Debut!
Thanks to some networking with a fellow Murphy, I have made my debut on Gamespace.com with a short review of Son of Scoregasm. Check the link below and let me know what you think, either there or here!
