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Barış C. Kaştaş

@barisckastas.bsky.social

87 followers 110 following 110 posts

Political Theory PhD Student, Université de Lausanne Almae Matres SciencesPo, GSL @ejderveejderha'nın yarısı Skeets in 🇹🇷🇬🇧🇫🇷 barisckastas.wordpress.com

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Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · 5h

Nothing much! Trying to juggle thesis writing and doctoral courses... I hope everything is good on your end! 😊

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · 5h

There I was, all motivated to get back building my personal webpage when I discovered that WordPress.com is selling all user data to OpenAI to train their LLM. I guess I'll need to find a new place to host my website before I do anything.

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · 12h

The difference between a fancy robe de chambre and a bathrobe seems to be attitude in the end!

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Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · 2d

I'm very sorry to hear about your loss.

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · 6d

Cumhuriyet değerlerini yaşatan herkesin Cumhuriyet Bayramı kutlu olsun!

Zeki Faik İzer'in 1933 yılında çizdiği İnlıkâp Yolunda tablosu.

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · 14d

He specifically mentions that laissez-faire capitalism is categorically incompatible with a conservative worldview, which I think is rather in line with the abandonment of civic virtue that we see today to the profit of planet-destroying billionaires.

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · 14d

Sorry for barging in, but to the moral decay among conservatives you two are discussing reminds me of GA Cohen's Rescuing Conservatism, where he specifically mentions that modern conservative parties are antithetical to the concept of "preserving the existing thing which has value"!

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Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · 14d

This is a serious accusation so I wouldn't really name names unless I somehow get concrete proof, but I hate how current LLM technology has made it so that we can't trust the authenticity of so many things in our life.

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · 14d

There's a new Youtube channel that gives surprisingly GMing advice that I'm watching, and I just can't help but shake the feeling that its scripts seem AI generated. The general writing style ("It's not just X - it's Y"), the way they Give A Special Name to basic advice, it all feels... off.

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · 15d

So basically a big Civ campaign?

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · 27d

Since TSR-era D&D didn't really do "balance", IMO the daily depletion of spell slots (and light, and rations etc.) was a measure of how deep you can go. But when everyone's combat abilities have daily limits and combat is balanced around those limits, the dungeon needs to account for that structure.

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · 27d

Do you think the "X encounters/day" way of designing the adventuring day (with or without the fine-tuning for bosses) plays well with old-school dungeoncrawling? When I'm designing a dungeon in 5e, I feel like the entire dungeon must fit an adventuring day or the player incentive to LR ruins pacing.

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · 28d

Real Prime Ministry of France has never been tried!

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · Sep 21

Putting fences around farm animals would be deadly for farmer's economy, says the wolf hungrily circling the farmstead

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · Sep 14

This reads like a wall of a text written by someone who talks *a lot* about TTRPGs with extremely complicated jargon, but in truth plays very little. Just the worst kind of person to discuss TTRPGs with.

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · Sep 12

Jersey and Guernsey, specifically.

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · Sep 11

Nothing like some unquestioned assumptions disguising themselves as self-evident a priori facts in analytic philosophy!

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Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · Sep 11

And let's not forget that Spain's regime change only happened because a terrorist attack killed Franco's first choice and the second choice was a closet democrat beyond all expectations who had to dodge a coup attempt in 1981!

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · Sep 11

I really want to believe in peaceful regime change away from authoritarianism, but if anything what we see is that either the authoritarians plunder the country and hand its corpse back after they're done or there is a violent intervention that ends the regime.

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · Sep 11

- Estado Novo could be considered as similar with the Portuguese military's colonial defeat pushing for a regime change

And most importantly, regardless of how you feel about the fall of communism, the existence of the US and NATO as a hegemonic power supporting anticommunism is a massive factor

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · Sep 11

I understand the sentiment, but I have to say a lot of these are very bad examples.

- Chile suffered for 17 long years under Pinochet and a lot of the regime's damage is still not undone
- The Greek Junta fell over its incapacity to Turkish response to Enosis in Cyprus

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · Sep 8

Skirmish and Ceasefire

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · Sep 5

This is fascinating since in Turkish we still call the queen the Vizier, but he's obviously got the post-Queen patch powerset. Even if the game balance was patched, the old name stayed!

And I'm guessing something similar happened with the Bishops which we call the Elephants!

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Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · Sep 4

20 years ago I might have said Dan Brown is also a contender, but seeing how he fell into irrelevance in the 2010s, this seems like the only correct answer!

Barış C. Kaştaş @barisckastas.bsky.social · Aug 30

I hope he's found soon! :(