Another ModBlog

Been in a drawing mood despite not currently having a functioning tablet, and a friend requested *Kira* Miki despite the fact that he hasn’t actually played the excellent game from which she hails and knows of its quality only by reputation. Please don’t judge it too harshly by *Kira* Miki’s... let’s call it an outfit. And proportions. They can’t all be Betty.

IT IS TECHNICALLY NOW YOUR BIRTHDAY, REMI! THIS IS AN OCCASION THAT CALLS FOR ALL CAPS! WHICH I DO BY HOLDING SHIFT WITH MY PINKIE BECAUSE I AM NOT A CAPS-LOCK USING SAVAGE! ALSO IT CALLS FOR EXCLAMATION POINTS! AND PROBABLY PEOPLE UNSUBSCRIBING FROM THIS BLOG I GUESS BECAUSE I’M MAKING AN ALL CAPS POST THAT ENDS EVERY SENTENCE WITH AN EXCLAMATION POINT!

The Department of Labor is looking to allow employers to take their employees' tips and redistribute them. This is meant to benefit untipped employees like dishwashers... but labor advocates say the rule would enable employers to pocket tips for themselves.

But another important factor is that this is basically a move intended to help remedy low worker retention in untipped jobs by extending the tip model to affect them even though they're working untipped jobs. It's a move made to help employers pay their workers less and shift the burden onto the tip system.

Which, at best would mean that people would need to start tipping far more on their bills than they currently do. Maybe 30% or even 40% instead of 20%.But, let's be real, people won't start tipping more just because the money's getting spread around after the work day ends. So it really just means that tipped workers will take home less money.

But I think the thing that bothers me most is that the tipping system is absolute bullshit to begin with -- they should just pay their workers enough from the get-go and charge the prices they need to charge to do so rather than relying on customers to pay extra voluntarily in the interests of maintaining deceptive menu prices -- and this is a move to expand the tipping system to cover more people. That is the opposite of the direction we should be moving.

And make no mistake, the tipping system is designed to obfuscate costs and shift risk to low-pay employees.

Anything you can do to make prices look lower than they are benefits a business. It's why, iirc, Xbox Live did a thing -- probably still does -- where you bought DLC and stuff with "microsoft points" instead of cash, and microsoft points cost like five cents for every four points. It makes the costs feel like less when you make your purchasing decisions and thus makes you more likely to patronize them and possibly to spend more.

Tips do the same thing. Pay your workers next to nothing yourself, but have customers pay 20% more without listing that 20% on the menu.

But you don't want to force them to pay extra without listing it or they'll get grumpy, so you go "Oh, no, it's optional, you don't have to tip. You just should because that's how these people make money." And then anyone who doesn't tip? Well, your employees eat that cost, not you.

If you want someone to agree with you on something, refusing to engage with them because they don’t agree already will not help. Likewise, if you want populations of people to agree with you on something, ceasing to engage with populations because they don’t agree already will not help.

The face of ugly factionalism is more powerfully repulsive than the face of ugly ideas.

People will seldom part with ugly ideas if people in opposed ideological factions treat them poorly for having an ugly idea to begin with. They are more likely to embrace the ugly idea with increasing ferocity.

People between factions in an ideological conflict will drift away from factions that treat them poorly for not sharing the faction’s stance than they will from factions that treat them less poorly, but have worse ideas. They are more likely to embrace an ugly idea held by welcoming factions than positive ideas held by antagonistic factions.

The first rule of counterinsurgency is “do not create more insurgents.” Similarly, the first rule to winning the minds of a population is to avoid driving those within the population to embrace opposing ideas with increasing frequency and ferocity.

To use a couple of contemporary examples: If someone is a Trump supporter and you refuse to speak with them because of it, you are helping to place them in an echo chamber that will support, maintain, and strengthen the ideas to which you object.  if someone suggests that maintaining the freedom to express beliefs no matter how objectionable is more important than punching nazis, even if you disagree, labeling them as an enemy drives them towards the camp of the real enemy -- the nazis -- who will be more than happy to have them, resulting in a more nazi-heavy population.

Now, I could write a damn essay on how to engage people you disagree with constructively, but that’s honestly a separate issue.

Thing is, while I don’t believe that we’re obligated to engage in unpleasant conversations with people holding opposing views all the time or even at all, I think it’s important that, at the very least, we understand that shutting out and especially antagonizing those who believe different things strengthens the beliefs we oppose.

So after years of feeling like I probably ought to, I started watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, the second highest-rated anime of all time on myanimelist.net, and... 

So. I was imagining a democratic republic in a fantasy setting that voted overwhelmingly to elect a lich as their chief of state. And I kind of love it.

(excluding spinoffs and sequels)

So I was musing about what Final Fantasy game, if any, I should play next, and while there’s no general consensus about which games are the best, I figured I could try to puzzle out how they stack up by pulling together some weaksauce metadata from a smattering of ranked listings. So I googled “ranking final fantasy games” without quotes, noted down their rankings with spinoffs and sequels removed, and did some basic math.

I pulled together four rankings: all games (excluding spinoffs and sequels), all games excluding FF15 (due to it only being ranked in two of the sources), all single-player games (because, really, MMOs are a different kind of beast), and all single-player games excluding FF15 (which is the tightest ranking, with all included games ranked on all sources).

So... here’s the last ranking I mentioned. I’ll put the other rankings, my sources, and my methodology -- along with some sweet, sweet spreadsheet action -- after the jump.

Single-Player Games Excluding FF15 12. Final Fantasy II 11. Final Fantasy XIII 10. Final Fantasy III 9. Final Fantasy I 8. Final Fantasy VIII 7. Final Fantasy XII 6 and 5. Final Fantasies V and X 4. Final Fantasy IV 3. Final Fantasy VII 2. Final Fantasy IX 1. Final Fantasy VI

I won’t lie: I’m pleased that FF6 made first (and even more pleased that it took first place by such a significant margin). Surprised that FF7 was beaten out by two games given the hype it once had and, to an extent, continues to have to this day. But I guess FF7′s popularity was always driven in large part by its reputation among people who weren’t otherwise fans of the series. Also, after the jump, we see FF15 doing quite well, but that could easily be skewed by how few sources included it (and reduced access to the benefit of hindsight).

What I didn’t manage was getting a sense of what to play next. I tried FF9 a few years back and couldn’t stomach it. That doesn’t bode well for the other, less-highly ranked games I haven’t played.

Ah, well.