Lurker > pyresword

Beautiful Prison
cirropod
Greenpath
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What is the gameplay/story ratio like in 3 Houses? Asking because I'm kind of interested in the game but really do not like SRPG gameplay as a general rule.
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Surprised at everyone saying EXPAJA is weak considering it's probably my 2nd favorite out of the ten or so songs from the game that have been in vgmc at some point.
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Class::EXPAJA
Wandering in the Darkness
Cotton Island

There's actually a decent chunk of songs I'd have voted over Wandering in the Darkness, which is my least favorite on the TitS setlist pretty easily, but Madness is not one of those songs. Not really a fan of this style.
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Frog's Theme
Satori Maiden ~ 3rd Eye
Flask of Loyalty

I liked Project S-11 a lot but unfortunately it's out of its league in this match.

The piano in the Touhou song is pretty catchy. I also like Dandard but I'm giving the edge to Touhou here.

Feel bad for All Our Asias because I do like it and I'm guessing it will get killed here. The Murasaki song was surprisingly good though.
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red13n posted...

pyresword posted...

Do medical corporations make obscene amounts of money? It's not clear to me right now how much the of high drug costs goes towards profit and how much goes towards offsetting high development costs.

https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=BdtRXeyKHo7z0wL1yLfABw&q=pharmaceutical+profits&oq=pharmaceutical+profits

pick an article.

Well, from the first article that came up from forbes, it seems to indicate that they DON'T make particularly large profits. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2018/01/23/about-those-soaring-pharma-profits/#342e2ef3f9db)

[This quote is from a Pharma CEO take with a grain of salt] Is this industry obscenely profitable? There is no evidence of that. If you look at our return on investment, our return on capital, if you look at our P/E, if you look at anything inside this industry looking at the Bloomberg indices we are in the middle.

Thats a pretty good speech, but in an era of fake news, how accurate are Reads comments? Actually, available data* are pretty supportive. The average return on equity for key industries from 2014 2016 shows that biopharmas profits stand at 16.2%, significantly lower than Computer Sciences (31.6%), Beverages (27.4%), Aerospace/Defense (23.0%), and Trucking (19.1%) while modestly higher than Software System/Applications (15.2%) and Healthcare Support Services (14.4%).

Another measure, Internal Rate of Return (IRR) is even more telling. IRR calculates the sales/cash flows resulting from R&D investments, ties R&D and the returns it generates together, and is a more appropriate metric for biopharma productivity. Deloitte reports that the IRR for biopharma R&D has been steadily falling from 10.1% in 2010 to 3.2% in 2017. Even Wall Street hasnt bought into the pharma soaring profits view. Since February 1, 2014, while the Dow has risen 63%, the stock prices of a number of major pharma companies have been muted with Pfizer and Bristol-Myers each growing by about 15%, and Merck and AstraZeneca by roughly 6.5%. Even Lillys growth of 43% still lags the Dow.

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Do medical corporations make obscene amounts of money? It's not clear to me right now how much the of high drug costs goes towards profit and how much goes towards offsetting high development costs.
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You guys (well, some of you) are missing LotM's point, which is that research into new drugs won't happen at all unless companies are able to make a profit off of it by charging high prices at the end of the day, because the initial cost of the research itself is so high. No one is going to attempt to develop new medicine out of the goodness of their heart if in doing so they're going to run themselves and all their employees out of a job. (and no one should do that, because those good intentions are misplaced)

You could argue that the federal government should pay for it because it's in society's best interest to do so, but that's a different thing than what LotM is saying.
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One Winged Angel
Road Taken
Requiem of Gemini

iirc this was actually my favorite song from the Soul Nomad setlist. (It has slow chanting so of course it is.) Might even be my favorite song of the day.

Snubs match >>> main matches (though, this was a pretty strong day for the main matches also)
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Power Glide
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Well I started playing (watching a Let's Play of--whatever) Ao no Kiseki and I got through the Prologue and Chapter 1. Technically speaking not a whole lot happened yet, but I really liked this anyways because:

--This has had some of the best sidequests in the series so far. (Strictly speaking I think the best one was a required quest but it still felt like a sidequest because it was minor NPC focused)
--I am absolutely hyped for what is coming next, both the stuff we already knew about from Cold Steel and otherwise. Setting up Red Constellation vs Heiyue is really cool, and I just love Red Constellation in general already. Also I got chills when Campanella showed up and The Enforcers started playing. Peak Trails right there.

Some other things:
--Dieter is a really cool character, especially already knowing the direction the rest of the game goes because of Trails of Cold Steel.
--I got needlessly excited when Ries showed up and it was revealed that (minor spoilers) Elie was already acquaintances with her. Just a pretty neat touch.
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Rainbow Colored Phantom Can't Swim!
Mechanical Rhythm
-

Main matches today are too good. Will listen to snubs tomorrow if I have time.
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Sad about Liberi Fatali but at least Hope managed to win.
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Hope
Liberi Fatali
New Bark Town

Time to quit BOST after inevitably losing match 1 or match 2.
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Pretty much the entire Cuphead OST
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLocQeghkorOWXJ3tu8YwNfbwjxTJ2UZWV

Some other stuff that's comign to mind even though you probably already know 1 or both of these:



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I play chess online pretty regularly if you want to count that (something like 3-4 days a week).

Other board games I pretty much play maybe 2-3 times a year with my current friends where I live now with whom it's not a big thing, or whenever I go and visit my old high school friends (who like board games more), which is only like once a year or something.
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It's kind of weird considering how much I like Trails that I have basically no interest in any other Falcom games.

Though I guess it makes sense when you consider that my ideal JRPG is basically just a visual novel with combat on the side maybe if it feels like it.
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Irelia, the Blade Dancer
Quicksand Pit
Redtailed Cat

There's something that bothers me about...well...I think all the Caravan Stories songs I've heard. I don't really know if I can describe it well, but it's like the songs always feel like they're driving towards something without actually going anywhere? It's like mentally I can never sit down and engage with the song properly because it's always rushing on to the next measure...or something. I don't know. There's certainly worse music out there, but I've always felt like something is holding these back.
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At the risk of putting words in others' mouths, I don't think anyone here is trying to claim a direct cause and effect relationship between anything Trump has done and the mass shootings.

I do think people are claiming that strong political and racial tensions in America are some (among many) problems that can contribute to such events, and believe that Trump has deliberately made those problems worse in America.
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Because ZTD was super disappointing to me.
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Servants of the Scourge
Silent Undersea Ruins
Millenium Anthem (2000 New Years Eve)
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Fortunately, our government allows us to elect someone who won't charge a toll and will just do what they think is best for the country!

But I mean yes I might be in favor of a deal proposing some kind of gun control legislation in exchange for some kind of immigration legislation, depending on the specific. "In favor of" here meaning that I think such a deal might be preferable to nothing--again depending on the specifics.

This is a different issue from whether or not I would approve of Trump's actions in proposing the deal in this hypothetical, to which the answer would most likely be that I would not.
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Predictable behavior and acceptable behavior are two different things yes.
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Do Republicans actually want to do anything on guns? My impression is that they're pretty content with the status quo right now, at least on that particular issue.

Edit: To clarify, I specifically mean Republican politicians here. I would believe that stricter gun control has reasonable support among Republican voters.
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Mirror Temple (Mirror Magic Mix)
L'avide
Stage 5: Sinai Mines (Mine Cart Ride)

Pretty easy choices.

1:40 of Sinai Mines is very cool.
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The data in the article lotm linked conclusively shows a correlation between number of guns and number of gun related deaths (which--yes--is not the same as number of mass shootings)
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...oh.

What a stupid mode of operation that is holy fuck.
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Going by the Wikipedia article, the relative percentage of unregistered firearms is much higher in the US than anywhere. Is there a reason for that?

Firearms in the US do have to be registered, correct? (I don't know really anything about gun laws themselves but would be very concerned if this were not the case)
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To clarify I meant "no one here". I don't doubt there are people somewhere out there that approve of all types of violence, but I'm trying to assert they are a minority.

In this context what I mean by "horrific attack" is a deliberately planned and unprovoked attempt to kill or seriously injure another. By "unprovoked" I only mean to rule out cases of self defense or defense of others and not cases of politically motivated violence.
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Corrik7 posted...

Many of you seem to think anyone who does some horrific attack is conservative and if the left does it, it was justified (Antifa).

Nobody thinks this Corrik.

If anyone actually does feel free to correct me but I'm pretty confident in this one.
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Undertale (song)
Enter the Battletoad
Magma Town

FF9 was my nom, but Assault of the Silver Dragons is a song I included mostly because I thought it would be well received and not because I have any particular attachment to it. (Like most songs in the game I think it is good, but not a top 5 song or anything) On the other hand Undertale is probably my favorite song from that game. Very nice use of the main motif. FF9 is probably what I'd say is the better soundtrack here, but oh well such is life.

Don't like match 2 at all.

Magma Town might actually be my favorite today, and if not then definitely my #2. Very pretty instrumentation.
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I seem to remember Nagi no Asukara being really popular when it was airing.

I really liked it, to be fair, but I think it's been mostly forgotten.
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Oh ok you guys were arguing about Trump's actions after the attack?

If so my earlier post doesn't really apply.
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I think Corrik's claim here is that Trump did in fact describe this pattern of immigration as an invasion. However it was not motivated by race at all but instead purely by the fact that there are illegal immigrants trying to enter the country.

Why that would matter even if we assume that does match Trump's intent is a complete and utter mystery to me. (Remember that large portions of the US population apparently do interpret his comments in terms of race--regardless of whether or not you yourself do)
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Yeah I also finished Zero the other day. Good game though that's pretty much par for the course with the series.

Current Trails ranking: SC > 3rd > Zero > FC > CS1 > CS2
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Tag.
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I could have done without the shrines in the game at all to be honest.

Though I guess one of them had a cool scene with Vita and Grianos so that was nice.
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I like Reach Out to the Truth. It's not like my favorite Persona song or anything but it's solid.
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Good topic quickly derailed by not good 2nd post.
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Mac Arrowny posted...

Azure has a lot less focus on Sky characters I think.

I didn't particularly mean to imply I thought this was a problem with Zero. Certainly it isn't in general since I think the inter-connectivity is one of the strengths of the series overall. It's more like I consider some of the stuff in Zero focusing on Sky characters to be almost like a side story? Obviously that's not always true because it converges again once the Cult becomes involved, but yeah.
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Took a bit of a break from this but finally beated Zero no Kiseki.

As usual from this series that was a top notch game. In many ways this felt like the most...well-balanced story of the series so far? Like, at many points the Sky series feels like it focuses on its characters at the expense of the world, whereas Cold Steel focuses on the world at the expense of the characters, but this one feels like a nice balance between the two? Now, I really like the characters in Sky, so it remains to be seen whether or not this will actually translate into a better experience for me personally, but I do feel that's an accurate description of the Crossbell games so far. The series has not yet reached the emotional highs of the Sky series yet other than perhaps the Renne scenes, which is a direct continuation of a Sky plotline and also sometimes feels out of place with the overall story in Zero sometimes? On the other hand though there's still a whole second game to go, so who knows where we'll be after that.

Final chapter was real good. Somewhat mixed feelings on the villain though. The Cult itself as an entity was really cool, but I was lukewarm on the actual priest himself. Maybe it works better if unlike me you didn't know his identity going into the game, but it felt like the villain dial went from 0 to 10 a bit too quickly to me, and he himself wasn't really that compelling as a villain anyway. I love though how when shit hits the fan all the various "good guy" factions just immediately team up to take him down.

Random comment: This has been bothering me more and more the deeper I've gotten into this series, but I really don't like the way the Sky games introduce the player to Ouroboros as an organization.

Best characters so far: All 4 main party members, Rixia, Cao Lee, maybe Sergei?

Chapter ranking (counting 4/5 as one chapter): 4/5 > 2 > 3 > 1 > Prologue

Tentative game ranking: SC > 3rd > Zero > FC > CS1 > CS2
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Reg posted...

pyresword posted...

I am inclined to agree with this move, assuming the claim is accurate that this is in response to years of Russian non-compliance. Is there a reason I shouldn't be?

A nuclear arms race is 100% counter to humanity's best interest. Always. Surely you can acknowledge that regardless of whether you agree or disagree with this?

Yes but America is only in control of its own actions. If Russia is going to escalate their arsenal, then I think America should escalate theirs in turn if it's necessary to continue acting as a deterrent. (While also encouraging de-escalation from both parties) If you guys just meant fuck in a general sense of "things ar escalating and that sucks", then I can agree with that.

Corrik I meant "is there a reason why I shouldn't be in favor of this", not "is there a reason I shouldn't believe Russia is out of compliance".
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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/02/politics/nuclear-treaty-inf-us-withdraws-russia/index.html

FUCK

I am inclined to agree with this move, assuming the claim is accurate that this is in response to years of Russian non-compliance. Is there a reason I shouldn't be?
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Tag.

I think I did a meme nomination for this one but hopefully you liked the songs anyway.
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Blocking doesn't work for quotes the way that ignoring does now.
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Oh I wasn't tracking this topic I guess but yeah I liked that part to. (I actually might have liked the chapter 2 finale more though? I don't know I have a soft spot for arcs/scenes like that. In any case both parts were great)

I am like partway through chapter 4 and will hopefully finish soon now that I'm not listening to a million soundtracks for Best OST,
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Welp. Can finally return to this now that BOST noms are finished. Now to see how many songs I have to make up...oh dear.
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Anyway my answers:

The Divine Comedy
Gulliver's Travels
Through the Looking Glass

HM: Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?
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Came in to say that the username did not check out, but it seems that it does--in fact--check out.
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I said this in the Discord but there were I think 11 or 12 users who I didn't support any of their noms, and 8 for whom I supported 3 or more.

Not sure if it was similar for other people but my supports were very clustered.
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