Audio EXP: #171 – Stats and lies

Welcome home.

This is Audio EXP for the 12th of November 2022, and the title of this episode is “Stats and lies”.

[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #171]

[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple | Google]

Bandit Camp are in the spotlight this month, as voted for by Patreons.

Ben at Bandit Camp has been kind enough to make some time for me, but the ball is in my court, and there’s no article yet up. Let’s make that something to look forward to as the month progresses.

Speaking of which, is it just me who feels like time is passing more quickly? Is it the speed of dramatic real-life events? The approach of Christmas and Hogmanay? Perhaps you think it’s too early to talk about such things, but there are only 7 weekends until New Year.

See what I mean about time being a lie?

Did you know the phrase “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” is often attributed to Mark Twain, but he credited to the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli yet there’s no evidence Disraeli said or wrote such a thing?

Here’s another stat that may boggle your mind. It did mine. AtlasVPN emailed me a report to say that 89% of Americans don’t password their wi-fi. There’s third-party evidence to support this.

I don’t suppose people who don’t password their wi-fi are interested in VPNs; they strike me as the opposite sort of person.

Someone on your wi-fi could send millions of unsolicited commercial emails, each potentially incurring a hefty fine. Someone on your wi-fi could look at horrible content and get you arrested.

Then some people haven’t changed their wi-fi since they set it up. I used to have to change my work password every two weeks, but I’ve never changed my wi-fi password that often. According to this research, 37% of people have never changed their wi-fi password, and 9% don’t know how.

The math only adds up if these stats are for the 11% of Americans who bother with wi-fi passwords. If this sounds like garbage, feel free to let AtlasVPN know, but it strikes me as lousy marketing for a VPN brand to be associated with dodgy cybersecurity stats.

I also have stats from the streaming search engine JustWatch. In the US, for October, the top three movies are;

1. Halloween
2. Halloween Ends
3. Hocus Pocus 2

That makes sense, right? October is Halloween month.

What was the top movie in the UK for October? According to their data, it was The Fellowship of the Ring.

Weird but possible, especially with Amazon’s Rings of Power getting all that advertising.

I am watching The Rings of Power but haven’t reached the end yet. I’m TV time poor but the relationship of prequels and sequels, official or otherwise, is interesting.

In RPG terms, that might also mean new and next editions, and we’ve had a spot of that on Geek Native this week too. Liz and Steffie of Angry Hamster Publishing wrote a bit about Witch: Fated Souls which is on Kickstarter for a second edition.

In Witch, you’re a magic user who got their power from a demonic deal, but if you manage to outwit the demon behind the deal, you might be saved. The Angry Hamster team talk about when is the right time for a second edition.

In this case, Witch 2e is moving to the system used in the award-winning Afterlife: Wandering Souls, a tabletop RPG I enjoyed.

That wasn’t the only guest post this week, as Leon Barillaro also came to the site to make the case for Collaborative Journaling Games. You’d usually play these alone, so that’s an unusual pitch.

Leon is crowdfunding one on BackerKit right now, it’s called O Captain, and it’s about travelling the stars and sea. BackerKit’s crowdfunding platform is up and running, but I’ve not been tracking it. Perhaps I should have had to see if it is eating into Kickstarter’s market share. Kickstarter seems to be very busy for RPGs, though.

The other edition change comes from Sojourner’s Moon 3.0. Version three has been out for a while but what’s new is the free-to-download preview that designer Randall Ellis put together for readers. You can find that on the blog, the link for which is in the transcript you can get to from the show notes.

Time was kind on the freebie front this week, and I found a few more. The Mimic’s Vault published a free player’s guide to the 5e-powered The Meadows. Imagine gangster goblins or kobolds with Tommy guns. That’s the Meadows.

Andrew Eagle published their first product to DriveThruRPG as a primer for the – I presume forthcoming – dysparea – a shattered world. That’s a surreal horror.

I also had a unique preview of Fragments of the Past. Published by Dev9K, this Bronze-age Mediterranean publishing skipped crowdfunding and went straight to Lulu for print. There’s a Collector’s Edition.

To finish up, let’s have a quick look at the bundles. I’m a bit behind but I did write up the two Traveller deals on the Bundle of Holding.

I was also tempted by the 30 years of Dynamic Forces on Humble, believe it or not, but I’ve not yet read The Boys comics, and they’re included.

Lastly, there are a few days left to enter Ralph Macchio’s Waxing On: The Karate Kid and Me book competition, which UK readers can win.

So, let’s finish there; happy Movember, and I’ll see you next week.