Lurker > adjl

TheNobleWoodApe posted...

I mean, sure. Do the work. Granted, 24/7 Corona news might have overshadowed a spurious epidemic of blood clots out of the blue, but there IS one common factor to the majority of the uptick in blood clots. That might be the place to start looking for the cause.

That's the reason for suspecting an association, but determining there to actually be one requires comparing them to a control group and looking more in-depth at potential causes, especially when it's happening so rarely. It's intuitive, but there is more to it than that.

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Zeus posted...

Did you ask yourself why journalists would have a vested interest in concealing the man's identity? And why tabloids in particular wouldn't want to post salacious supporting information like photos of the man and his daughter?

I answered both of those questions in the post you quoted. Please try to keep up.

Zeus posted...

If they wanted to respect the matter, they likely wouldn't mention it at all.

Unless they wanted to keep the public informed of interesting and/or significant goings-on within the nation's legislative system. Which, you know, is why journalism exists. How shocking.

Zeus posted...

odd when a wannabe tabloid writer somehow thinks it's obvious that something is withheld despite binging enough tablets to know that the fact it's being withheld is actually pretty f***ing weird

I think you might be giving Duckbear too much credit to presume him capable of understanding such nuance. That's a little more higher-level thinking than he usually demonstrates.

Zeus posted...

particularly since it limits their clickbait.

Clickbait's in the headline, which almost never publishes names unless it's an ongoing story involving somebody particularly well-known. Not publishing the name doesn't limit the article's clickbait potential at all, because by the time the reader finds out that the name isn't in there, they've already clicked on it (see: your presence in this topic, which did not mention his name in the title). That, and "NY dad suing feds because they won't let him marry his daughter" has about all the clickbait potential any headline can have.

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Generally, no, because the people being exposed subjected themselves to that exposure knowing and accepting the risks (as much as any of these idiots understand risk analysis, anyway, since it's pretty well established that they aren't exactly the brightest fish in the shed).

Now, those infected by attending such superspreader events who carelessly go on to transmit it to others that have every reason to believe they're safe? There's a case to be made there.

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SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

I intentionally ignored the part about Nazi because I seriously doubt the person in question wants to ethnically cleanse Europe.

What, not content to let Zeus have all the fun pedentically demanding that people append "neo-" every time they speak about any group following the Nazi ideology that isn't Germany's ruling power in the 30's?

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TheNobleWoodApe posted...

Really? Being trans prevents you from buying a basketball and dribbling it down to the local basketball court?

No it doesn't. Your own hangups are the thing standing in the way.

In an ideal world, sure. In the real world, decidedly less so, at least presuming that you want to find people willing to play with you there.

Of course that's even without talking about you dismissing the insecurity inherent in feelings of dysphoria as merely being "your own hangups." It's quite a bit more than that, and definitely qualifies as an accessibility issue.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

I just meant eugenics were part of the Nazi-ideology. I feel like medical advancements (like vaccines), even if they have a negative effect on a small part of the population, would fit right in with that idea.

I take it you haven't seen people argue against vaccines (and medicine in general, really) because they keep the weak from dying out. It's far, far too common for people to say that vaccines are bad because they weaken the immune system (which is the exact opposite of how they work, but nobody expects these people to be intelligent).

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Zeus posted...

The thing that pisses me off about this -- and I said in the other topic -- is that the incidents involve very specific demographics. So instead of giving it to those people, why can't they just give it to everybody else?

Because they're trying to figure it out just how it works and they're erring on the side of caution to avoid endangering more people than they need to. In practice, they probably could ignore this issue entirely and keep giving it to everybody and it'd do several orders of magnitude more good than harm, but that's generally not the best attitude to approach pharmaceuticals with, especially when so many people are hesitant to get any of these vaccines. Until they iron out the details of the problem and can actually say for certain that it's only an issue in specific demographics, pulling it entirely is the best course of action.

Zeus posted...

And then f***ing NPR was trying to spin this s***, pointing out that J&J only accounts for 5% of the vaccines given out so far, a ridiculous piece of propaganda and a perfect example of lying with statistics considering that the J&J came out much, much later than the others.

Alternatively, only accounting for 5% of vaccines given out so far means pulling it isn't going to make a significant difference to the current vaccination rate trajectory, so people shouldn't worry about this compromising the whole process beyond recovery. But hey, let's call it propaganda (to... some end >.>), and not reassurance.

Zeus posted...

At any rate, like I also said in that topic, I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't in some way linked to AZ contaminating the J&J vaccine at that facility where they were producing both.

And like I said in that topic (and a previous one where you blamed that one dude's serious rash on the same contamination), I'm still waiting for you to provide some sort of basis for this theory. The longer you go without doing so, the more reason I'm given to believe you have none.

Do you have stock in J&J or something? You seem personally offended by anything that might interfere with its ability to become the dominant vaccine: Europe's preference for AZ, blaming AZ for all of J&J's serious side effects, getting mad at NPR for "lying" about how many doses had been administered... I'm game for thinking critically and holding pharmaceutical companies accountable and whatnot, but you seem to be cheerleading for the J&J vaccine to an extent that I usually only see in console war arguments.

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GameLord113 posted...

Could be because video games allow you to become someone different or create a character of who you are. If I felt I was trapped in a body I didnt identify with, that freedom or escape can definitely be appealing. Plus who doesnt want to be a big boobied adventurer who saves the world.

This is the first thing that comes to mind for me, though it's very much just baseless speculation that sounds plausible. In a similarly baseless vein, I could believe that there's also enough of a history of gamers being social outcasts that similarly-ostracized trans people felt at home among them, or that people who were already social outcasts for being nerds felt like they had less social status to lose by coming out as trans, or that gamers are less inclined to ostracize people because they've experienced it themselves (this last one is probably the least plausible. Gamers are dicks).

Of course, for that matter, I don't even know that trans people really are overrepresented in gaming or if TC's just displaying confirmation bias because he's totally fine with trans people. This idle speculation may be efforts to explain a trend that doesn't actually exist. Who knows?

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OhhhJa posted...

You could make this same exact argument for a huge amount of the covid deaths tbh. Especially since the average age of covid deaths is 84

It's okay guys, a fraction of the 3 million people that have died of Covid might have died from some other comorbidity instead. That's basically the same thing as there being no conclusive link between these vaccines and subsequent deaths, so we might as well blame the vaccine for murdering thousands.

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MartianManchild posted...

I hope you realize you sound exactly like Trump did at the beginning of the pandemic trying it o downplay this. Liberal hypocrisy at its finest.

I mean, the alternative is trying to pretend that Covid is less risky than these vaccines, which is clearly false. Even if we accept that "downplaying" is an accurate way to describe comparing statistics (which is highly questionable), it's consistent with empirical reality, so I'm not sure why you'd take issue with it.

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OhhhJa posted...

No need to be a douchebag. Pandemrix is a vaccine that was pushed out really quickly similar to the covid vaccines. Difference is that it wasn't a completely new type of vaccine like the mRNA ones. Still there were lots of adverse effects

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix#:~:text=Pandemrix%20is%20an%20influenza%20vaccine,and%20patented%20in%20September%202006.

So... it still wasn't "untested," which is the central point of what I said.

Moreover, it's a given that trials of 30-40,000 participants aren't going to catch one-in-a-million side effects. That's going to be true no matter how "rushed" a product is. The standards set by the FDA and other regulatory agencies (which, I must again point out, all Covid vaccines are meeting before being approved, despite the accelerated timeline) do not and cannot rule out extremely rare side effects. They can only catch the ones that are common enough to render the treatment more dangerous than the disease, and in an emergency situation like this, it's perfectly reasonable to push ahead with the best available option instead of waiting for something perfect.

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SunWuKung420 posted...

Clearly you've never had to beat 3 dozens eggs.

Pretty sure I have. I've definitely separated that many, if nothing else, which is way more work. For that matter, if you're routinely beating that many eggs, you should probably be using a mixer to do it, which takes out all the actual work entirely and frees you up to do other things.

Regardless, though, you're going to be beating roughly that many eggs for all three, especially if you're working on that scale. Nobody with the remotest understanding of the phrase "overdeveloped gluten" (which is a prerequisite for making decent pancakes) should even consider adding that many eggs to a bowl of flour without beating them first. With french toast, though, that's pretty much all there is to it (I'm comfortable saying that dipping the bread is roughly the same amount of work as dispensing pancake/waffle batter, so we can discount that step for all three), while pancakes and waffles require several additional ingredients and mixing steps, including much thicker batters that are both physically harder to mix and more sensitive to overmixing (read: there's more potential to screw them up). That becomes even more true if you're looking at waffles with whipped egg whites folded into the batter, which require added steps of separating the eggs, whipping them up, and the rather delicate, laborious task of folding them in without collapsing the batter.

So... my statement stands. You're not the only one here with food service experience, Sunny.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

Details? As the idea kinda surprises me.

The idea of anti-vaxx ideologies? A lot of them are based around a study from ~1998 that suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Said study was almost immediately debunked as being poor science (n=12, plenty of evidence of conflicts of interest, conclusions that were based on nothing more than correlations...), every effort since 1998 to replicate the results has failed, and the study was formally retracted and the doctor's license revoked after he admitted to fabricating the whole thing to help out the legal cases of a couple patients who were attempting to sue pharmaceutical companies because their kids were autistic, but a growing number of people have been treating it as gospel ever since.

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OhhhJa posted...

You say that... but we have pandemrix as a glaring example that a vaccine produced in a small time frame is not always as safe as our big pharma overlords assure us it is

Care to elaborate on how you think this little bit of word salad does anything to refute what I said?

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Zeus posted...

Uh, what? No, it's not f***ing obvious. In fact, it's the opposite of obvious since court filings are generally a matter of public record.

It is, however, obvious why he wouldn't personally share his name and why the journalists writing the article wouldn't push the matter. I'm sure the journalists could have found his name if they dug for it, and it would likely ultimately be deemed legal to do so if it were taken to court, but it's just easier and safer for everyone involved to not invite the kind of harassment and violence (and subsequent lawsuits) publishing his name would invite.

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SunWuKung420 posted...

How idiotic. I wouldn't even eat at a Denny's, forget about working for one.

#realfood

Real food, but I can't help but notice that your ranking perfectly aligns with a ranking of which ones are easiest to make.

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Krazy_Kirby posted...

or anti brand new and untested vaccines?

That's not really a position that has any practical impact, given that no untested vaccines are allowed to enter the market. If people don't even have the option to take untested vaccines, refusing them is a pretty hollow gesture.

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I'd generally put waffles slightly ahead of pancakes in terms of flavour and texture, but they're also more work and slower to make (especially if you whip egg whites for them), giving the overall edge to pancakes (as in, if I'm choosing one to make, it'll more often be pancakes). French toast, I tend to consider separately, since it's such a different flavour (though it's often served similarly), but if I had to rank it with the others, I'd put it slightly behind, despite being the simplest to make by far. To summarize:

If they're made for me: Waffles>Pancakes>French Toast
If I'm making them: Pancakes>Waffles>French Toast

That said, if french toast includes bread pudding (them basically being the same thing and all), that gives it more of an edge. Bread pudding is fantastic. It's much more dessert-y, though, so counting it in this comparison isn't altogether reasonable.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

biscuits aren't even in the same category

I can understand including them, since they can also be served with stuff like syrup, fruit, and whipped cream, but I'm inclined to agree. Biscuits/scones are very different from the other three, in terms of flavour, consistency, method... basically everything. If nothing else, making them is way more involved than making pancakes, waffles (except maybe proper belgian ones with whipped egg whites), or French toast, so it's decidedly less feasible to whip up a fresh batch to have for breakfast.

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Goosebumps posted...

Oh wow he was executed?

Uhh, yes? Perhaps not this particular case, where it seems more like a matter of grossly negligent homicide than a deliberate killing, but pretty much everything you've posted here has amounted to "it's okay for police to deliberately kill criminals if they don't cooperate well enough." That's an execution, dude.

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grimhilde00 posted...

Did AZ blood clotting also only apply to premenopausal women or was that common trait not there?

An unspecified (in the article I read) majority of cases were in women under 60, which I think we can reasonably conflate with being premenopausal. The impression I had is that there's a trend favouring younger women, but not anything conclusively exclusive to them.

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Goosebumps posted...

you can lower the odds of it happening to you by not attacking armed police officers.

adjl posted...

Since when does "being responsible for your own actions" include being executed without trial for non-capital offences?

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Goosebumps posted...

They get it, they just refuse to accept it, because it involves being responsible for your own actions.

Since when does "being responsible for your own actions" include being executed without trial for non-capital offences?

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I don't particularly fear it, but I'm generally enjoying life and would prefer not to die any time soon, so I'm not about to go risking it unnecessarily.

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Zeus posted...

And they're sure this isn't linked to the AZ contamination? Because the time-line kinda corresponds with the contamination.

You've brought this possible connection up multiple times, but I still haven't seen you provide an actual basis for the theory. What have you seen to suggest it?

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Zeus posted...

The sick, sadistic glee you take in these deaths is so fucking weird. It's like schadenfreuden on crack.

You have fallen into the Sar Chasm. You hear a persistent whooshing noise overhead. Exits are N and E.
_

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I've never particularly liked "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun even before encountering people who prefer it as a means of being identified, due to the quantitative ambiguity it introduces, but until English gets its act together and comes up with a better one that people don't ruin by attaching dehumanizing connotations to it ("it"), it's the best we've got. I see no reason not to respect people who prefer it.

Lokarin posted...

To solve all problems... just say "thou"

Doesn't really solve the issue of third-person pronouns. Second-person ones are fine: "you" is already gender-neutral, and while it's also quantitatively ambiguous, context usually indicates when it's supposed to be plural ("thou" used to be the singular version, but fell out of use because it wasn't really necessary), and when it doesn't, it's very easy to append something like "all" or a gesture to remove any confusion.

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shadowsword87 posted...

Joules, that's what you're looking for.
Watts is for electricity, joules is for kinetic energy.

Watts are just joules/second. You can describe kinetic energy in terms of wattage if you're looking at how quickly energy is generated/consumed.

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wwinterj25 posted...

Use the correct words next time.

"Roaming the countryside" is a pretty common idiom for "all over the place." There's really no reason to presume from that that he was singling out rural folks as being less compliant and/or more rude about precautions.

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Zeus posted...

No, if you were immune, you wouldn't be carrying it. You're thinking of somebody who's asymptomatic (or, more likely, has symptoms so minor that they go unnoticed or get written off as something else)

"Carrying" may not be quite the right term, but there is still considerable question about whether or not vaccinated people are still able to transmit the virus despite not developing any sort of meaningful infection from it. Until that's confirmed one way or another, continuing to recommend masks and distancing will guard against that possibility in addition to being the most practical way to ensure unvaccinated people are not posing an undue risk.

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Blightzkrieg posted...

We got super lucky with covid as well.

The fact that an effective vaccine could be developed in the space of a year is crazy.

I'm not actually surprised by that. Most of the time it takes to develop any new drug is a consequence of needing to secure funding and find trial participants. Covid's a really huge problem that everyone wants to fix, so everyone with money to throw at it has done so (see: Bill Gates preemptively building 7 different vaccine factories despite knowing full well that only one or two of them would ever actually end up being useful), and people have lined up to volunteer for trials. With that kind of commitment from world governments and supports, any pharmaceutical could be developed in a fraction of the usual time.

Now, the fact that many of those vaccines are showing 90%+ efficacy? That's pretty lucky. Many vaccines never reach such a threshold, so achieving that on such an emergency basis is absolutely fantastic.

Kanatteru posted...

yeah, i think i am done with ontario after i graduate. i have a lot of friends in montreal now, maybe i'll try there. some would say that's picking a different poison though lol

Right now, Montreal's a mess, certainly, but outside of grossly mismanaging pandemics it's a pretty decent place to live. Quebec's current governing party has some... interesting ideas about how to run the place (you'd think somebody with such a keen interest in his French heritage would know what happens to French heads of state when they try to snuff out poor people >.>), but I'd still prefer it to Ford's bumbling incompetence and active efforts to undermine the basic foundations of society, and whatever Quebec as a whole is doing, Montreal kind of remains its own entity.

To Ford's credit, I actually felt he handled the pandemic reasonably well in the early stages. Stuff was locked down to a reasonable degree early enough to make a meaningful difference and keep many communities safe. He just relaxed things too soon and at roughly the same time as students began going back to many of those formerly-safe communities, mostly from not-safe Toronto, resulting in a bunch of major outbreaks that never came back under control. Then his flip-flopping ever since has just made people less willing to comply while also negating any good the restrictions were able to accomplish while they were in effect.

I shouldn't be too smug, though. As much as the Atlantic provinces have done an amazing (like, almost NZ-calibre) job of getting the pandemic under control, that's been as much because of good fortune as good planning. We never had a really substantial initial load of cases to contend with, which made it much, much easier to wrangle the cases we had and get to the point where we could maintain near-zero levels. By and large, we have still been very good about complying with requirements, but a large part of that is because we have been able to taste success and therefore know that we can achieve it again if we remain committed through additional waves. That does a lot for motivation.

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Mead posted...

I mean there were outbreaks of SARS though

I think that was essentially the same virus

It was (Covid's actual name is SARS-CoV-2), but SARS decided to spontaneously mutate into being harmless. Bin Laden was also still alive during the SARS outbreak. Coincidence? I'm just asking questions.

Side note: The utter disaster that Covid has been has really driven home just how incredibly lucky we all were that SARS killed itself. The public health world was gearing up for a pandemic even worse than Covid has been while the rest of us toiled away in blissful ignorance, but the virus decided to give us a break. We beat SARS not by good management or because it didn't have the potential to shut down the world, but by sheer dumb luck, which is honestly kind of terrifying.

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Blightzkrieg posted...

I know this is a shitpost, but drawing a line between these two things is like drawing a line between the increase in covid cases and the death of Osama bin Laden.

How many Covid cases were there before bin Laden died? None? That's what I thought.

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The additional bonus of leathers is that, if the person does crash, it tends to be a broken neck that kills them, which means all of their organs are nicely pre-packaged in a solid body bag that keeps them safe for donation.

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Lokarin posted...

The problem is pretty much no one is respecting the lockdowns, never did for the whole year, and ALSO complained the lockdowns were too much

Pretty much. Most of the country has done a better job of managing Covid than the US has (see: vastly fewer cases and deaths), but many provinces have never made it down to comfortable levels and governments have caved to pressure to relax restrictions well before it was actually safe to do so, resulting in cases repeatedly getting out of control. Between variants and people refusing to accept a new wave of restrictions after getting to relax again (fuelled by a false sense of security provided by the vaccines, despite rates still being relatively low and case numbers exploding), case numbers are very much not going the way they should be.

Kanatteru posted...

canadian healthcare has pros and cons for sure, however this is not actually an issue with the system. at least here in ontario, it's because of our reckless conservative government continuing to do lockdowns that don't actually lock anything down and then reopening way too soon, which is why we are now on our third stay-at-home order

on the bright side, i really don't see doug ford getting reelected at this point. he has one of the lowest approval ratings of a premier in the country and his base (wealthy people in toronto) are mad at him for making them have even more severe lockdowns due to the weird ineffective regional approach

I'm so glad I left Ontario last summer. We left in early August, and London blew up around mid-September and really hasn't properly settled down since. Meanwhile, in Nova Scotia, we had 5 new cases yesterday, all of which can be traced to either travel or contacts with previous cases. New Brunswick is struggling a bit, thanks to their land borders with Quebec and the US, but PEI and Newfoundland are doing roughly as well as NS. The Atlantic Bubble has worked, which is so fantastic.

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JoseAAV posted...

There really should be a lane for motorcycles like the bicycle lane-or just allow them there-because Im tired of them breaking laws to pass daily drivers through exits, or the sides, or the center lane.

Bike lanes exist because they allow bikes to use the road without obstructing traffic, since the vast majority of cyclists can't keep up with most car traffic. Motorcycles can keep up with traffic (if anything, traffic struggles to keep up with them, given how much more quickly they can accelerate/stop), so they don't need a dedicated lane. That they abuse shoulders and other extra bits of road to pass dangerously is just them driving dangerously, not a sign that they need a dedicated lane to make it safer for them to drive dangerously.

hockey7318 posted...

Agreed to a degree, but if safety was a huge concern there would be more helmets and people wearing leathers I feel...

There is an argument to be made that motorcycle helmets do more harm by obstructing visibility than they do good by preventing brain/neck injuries. I haven't seen any actual stats on the matter, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if real evidence leans in favour of wearing them, but speaking theoretically and on an intuitive basis, I can sympathize with not wearing one.

Leathers, though, everyone should indeed wear. Dress for the slide, not the ride.

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JOExHIGASHI posted...

Can't we just have a random character generator instead of infinite massless monkeys and typewriters?

What's the difference?

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wolfy42 posted...

So wear a mask then, but give people that a mask is actually a real problem for, a different option.

That's basically how it works now. Mandates typically include a caveat for people who can't wear one for a medical reason. That gets rampantly abused by morons that just yell "I'm medically exempt!" as they go about their business without a mask because they're excited to have learned such a big word, but if you genuinely can't wear one (which, I should point out, is completely psychological and not physical, speaking as somebody who's put a mask on during an asthma attack and been perfectly fine), find a doctor to write you an exemption and most businesses will work around your inability to wear one (though usually by asking you to phone in your order and bring it out to you).

That's not going to be enough for flying, obviously, but honestly, nobody should be flying unnecessarily anyway.

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SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

If so, how are they expected to press the keys on the typewriter?

Presumably, the typewriters would also be massless, so as to also occupy the same point in space.

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To a certain extent, motorcycles being loud is justifiable. It's very, very common for drivers to simply not see motorcycles because they're looking for cars and not motorcycles, and being loud enough to be clearly audible draws an extra amount of attention to them that helps keep them safe. That isn't carte blanche to be as loud as one wants, though, and there are definitely plenty of bikers out there that make lots of noise because they're just tools about it, not for any reason related to safety.

Now, loud cars/trucks? That's just people being douchebags. There's no reason for that.

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I found the first few seasons entertaining enough, but it really just dragged on far longer than hamfisted "look guys we're so nerdy and awkward!" jokes could carry it, and I lost interest.

Clench281 posted...

I don't see the problem here

It's mostly that they just cram all the nerdy things into every one of the characters. The whole "nerd blackface" critique perhaps goes a bit far in that it's not nearly as hurtful and doesn't have nearly the same discirminatory history of actual blackface, but it's not inaccurate: They made the characters by cramming as many nerdy stereotypes and pop culture references in as possible, which - as somebody who is actually nerdy and knows plenty of nerdy people - is just too unrealistic to be anything but cringy, more often than not. It's largely a matter of trying to appeal to a mainstream audience that will say "lol, what a nerd," just like blackface is trying to appeal to a white audience that will say "lol, what a *redacted*." That's not to say it can't be funny to play up stereotypes like that, but the novelty wears off pretty quickly if there isn't enough other interesting content to prop it up and/or if it's too hamfisted.

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funkyfritter posted...

Yes, it's safer and avoids the huge hassle of trying to verify who has been vaccinated. Any badge or card like you're suggesting would be easily faked and difficult to check closely without causing a confrontation. Also, the last thing we want is for everyone to start mingling without masks while there's still a high chance of a new strain developing that current vaccines aren't effective against.

Pretty much. Presuming the vaccines work properly and aren't subverted by emerging variants (which is already a pretty big presumption), it's still going to be vastly simpler and more reliable to just keep requiring masks until case numbers get to levels where masks aren't expected to help anymore. Anything else is going to require additional logistics and create the risk of counterfeits, and wearing masks is really a trivial requirement.

MartianManchild posted...

Im absolutely dying with laughter by how naive you are. Ok, the things youre talking about that you think are requirements are the standard stuff that pretty much all schools have. Guess what? There are people who attend theses schools and get their degree without meeting those vaccine requirements due to exemptions. You thinking that all doctors have to be vaccinated in order to get a license is hilarious, but please continue on making a fool of yourself.

The premise that the medical school example was meant to disprove was the idea that showing proof of vaccination was somehow an unprecedented level of totalitarianism. It is true that med school students are required to show proof of vaccinations for certain major diseases, including TB. There are certainly circumstances under which people can be exempted, such as allergies to the vaccines in question (my mother is a doctor who's missing several vaccines, for example, because she's had severe allergic reactions to many of them), but that doesn't mean the rule doesn't exist. It also stands to reason that any Covid vaccine requirement would offer similar exemptions. I'm not sure why you think citing exemptions somehow shoots down the belief that vaccine requirements are reasonable.

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SunWuKung420 posted...

I know all about infinite possibilities. I exist in all of them.

You also do not exist in all of them.

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SunWuKung420 posted...

Dthiekdudyfixnxygydfgbv h tb h g fxn kd wofj. T t ub ivunx. Jc db ufxhxj mf shndl5. Mcxuc

This is what a monkey would post.

Most likely, but the fun thing about infinity is that probability no longer means anything. The odds of a monkey randomly typing something comprehensible are infinitesimal, but with infinite monkeys, it becomes guaranteed that not only one of them will do so, but an infinite number of them will. An infinite number of them will also type exactly what you wrote, another infinite number will derive the quadratic formula in perfect Gaelic, and another infinite number will reveal your secret pizza recipe. Infinity is comprised of infinite infinities, in which finite probabilities cease to matter.

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NeoSioType posted...

Thanks for all the help. I meant kill bonus and I was focusing on it over training because I heard things get harder on higher floors.

Yep, that's generally the best way to go, though in practice, you'll be up against max stat enemies almost immediately either way and higher floors therefore don't change that much. Max out the difficulty and wipe every floor you encounter, aside from mystery rooms that are either too hard (namely the bank) or too cumbersome to trigger the fight in (like the one that gives you the pie item). You can raise the KB cap by raising the item's max level in the assembly, but you run into massive diminishing returns past the default 400 cap, so it's generally not worthwhile (especially considering how expensive that bill is to pass).

NeoSioType posted...

I found the dupe room when I was doing that and it was a terrible experience. I had very fast movement on in the options and for some reason thought I needed to be back at base to change it. Turns out it was on the next page over. Controls were so sensitive but I somehow managed to get to the top but the duplication failed, lmao.

The dupe room takes some getting used to. The first couple times I found it, I just straight up gave up. You'll eventually get the hang of it and figure out the easiest route to the top. Just make sure you've got somebody in the squad that unlocks triple jump, plus put the Super Jump evility on somebody (anyone at all, doesn't have to be Killia or whoever you're controlling) for good measure.

NeoSioType posted...

As for unique evilty slots, something that I didn't understand because I stopped playing for so long was the slot you get from Prinny Overlord. I thought there was a LoC version and couldn't find out how to unlock it but it's the one that you fight to unlock LoC in the first place. So basically 2/3 of them are easy to get.

Yep, the only hard one is from the LoC boss. Prinny Overlord is a cake walk for anyone with even just 10M stats, let alone 20M+.

NeoSioType posted...

The LoC final boss wasn't the last fight I had unlocked. It's the boss before the final boss and it's supposedly harder from what I heard.

Carnage Dark is the one you want. Still not an easy fight, since he'll annihilate pretty much anyone you let him attack unless they've got really beefy defenses, but it's reasonably feasible to burst him down before he has a chance to do that and/or bait him into attacking a sacrifice while your main units blow him up.

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Zareth posted...

I mean monkey's don't know how to type so they're probably mashing the keys, and keys that are close together are going to be hit at the same time. So I think that's technically impossible.

With infinite monkeys, it doesn't matter how many multitudes type gibberish, because there is always another infinite number of monkeys pressing the correct keys to complete the actual posts. By the simple nature of infinity, it would happen almost instantaneously.

Blightzkrieg posted...

wow, this isn't the kind of thing an anime protagonist would say, monkey or not

Well then I guess I need to queue up some dramatic betrayal music. Get me infinite monkeys on infinite pianos.

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Blightzkrieg posted...

People are allowed to feel guilty for things they aren't directly responsible for.

Don't shame us for having a fucking conscience.

But this isn't just something we're not directly responsible for. This is something that will inevitably happen regardless of what I do or don't do. I have absolutely no ability to influence the simultaneous infinite outcomes of these infinite possibilities. None of us do. Everything that can happen, will.

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NeoSioType posted...

I reached 20M base stats but I don't know how to crack the code with the perfect evilties/party setup to reach 40M.

-Having a character in a full Foot Soldier squad gives them +20% stats (+1% per member), bonus if unit in question is male (or female with Gender Bender) and other squad members all have Bodyguard (+5% damage each)
-Having a character in a full Flatty Squad (only works for flat-chested characters) gives them +25%
-Unstable Power increases stats by 50%, then decreases by 20% per turn (not an issue if you're one-shotting the map)
-Heavy stance gives +30% stats, at the cost of not being able to lift/throw
-Violence gives +50% stats, -50% exp gained (irrelevant at level cap)
-Charismatic Novice increases stats of adjacent units by 10% (up to 40%, with 4 supporters, pair with Angel Song and Christo's Superlative Ally for a nice ATK boost)

There are a few other options, but some combination of those will get you up to 35/40M pretty comfortably.

NeoSioType posted...

I thought I start working on my LoC Trapezohedron because I heard you can't mess it up in this one but there's no way I can get the training bonus to 400 on 0 Stars. I was killing everything and by floor 60 I had like 4 training bonus so I just reverted to an old save.

Kill Bonus is the one that increases by killing stuff and caps at 400, you'll want to do that on 20 stars and kill everything to speed it up (should be doable to max it out within somewhere between 300 and 500 floors, under those conditions). Training Bonus just increases by killing bosses and clearing mystery rooms, so your best bet is either to use Diver-10's to skip between boss floors, or use a runner with the evilities/squad bonuses that allow them to skip 5 floors on entering the gate. If you're raising the Training Bonus, make sure you've got a max-level Innocent for each stat on the item. It took me ~6000 floors to max it out on an Axel Gear, but it's faster on items with higher base stats (like Traps).

Once you max both, then you just hunt for Dupe rooms so you don't have to do it again.

NeoSioType posted...

Guides always want to mention having the last two unique evility slots unlocked but the prerequisite, LoC final boss has maxed stats even on 0 stars wtf.

Generally speaking, the last unique evility isn't that crucial to builds. You can leave it out until you're up to taking on that boss. When you do, the best strategy is to clear the map and whittle him down to near death on the first turn (a suitably buffed sage can do this with Land Decimator and Comet Disaster), then move everyone back into the base except for a bait character a few spaces out from it. When he attacks the bait character, bring out the character you want to unlock the slot for, then put Christo (or another supporter) next to them, pile another 8 characters on top of them, and use Tower Laser to finish off the boss. That should suffice, provided you've got enough powerful characters in the tower.

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Infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters will also eventually type out all of the trash I don't post, though. In fact, the same infinite subset of the infinite monkeys will be traumatized by typing out the trash I don't post as would be traumatized if they typed out the same trash if I did post it.

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Judgmenl posted...

Single Player games don't really interest me anymore.

That's really going to limit you as far as avoiding artificial lengthening strategies goes, then. By their very nature, multiplayer games almost have to incorporate some kind of hook to keep their active player base as large as they can, particularly if they're funded by recurrent spending models. If they don't, they struggle to maintain enough of a player base for players to have anyone to play with. That's generally going to mean a progression system, randomized rewards, or both.

That said, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Yes, many games use such systems to manipulate players into spending money on microtransactions, but there are plenty of examples of games that just use them to add an extra layer of motivation on top of "it's fun to play" and make players feel like they've accomplished something with each session. I would actually characterize PoE as the latter: Its loot system is certainly not without its issues (if nothing else, playing SSF is pretty gimped, but trading is a major pain, which is fundamentally a broken concept), but it's completely possible to have a good time and clear enough content to be entertaining without having to delve into the ridiculous RNG-fest that is obsessively min/maxing characters. The game doesn't coerce you into spending money (by the time I felt that shelling out for extra stash tabs was reasonable, I'd already spent more than enough time playing to justify spending $20, and that was all I ever spent for over 500 hours), it just offers genuinely optional purchases that can enhance the experience.

Of course, by the sounds of things, you struggle to accept not min/maxing, and that's why PoE hurts you so much. That, I'm afraid, is on you, not on PoE. Sure, PoE could stand to make its min/maxing process (significantly) less terrible, but it also doesn't make it necessary to have a good time (source: I had a good time without min/maxing). If it hurts you to not min/max, then that's you abusing yourself, not being abused by the game.

Maybe give Grim Dawn a shot if you want a similarly deep ARPG experience without such egregious RNG shenanigans. I find it does a much better job of balancing the whole "build-enabling gear" concept (a sizable chunk of the gear that would be considered build-enabling/defining can be target farmed), and the easy respecs make it very reasonable and intuitive to approach it with the attitude of "I'm going to build around the gear I've found." It also has just as much (if not more) build variety going for it, with plenty of mechanics to streamline leveling alts to try out other builds.

Judgmenl posted...

in Factorio's case I thiink I put like 10 minutes in and that was it. It didn't really interest me.

10 minutes doesn't sound like much. I'm not sure you'd even have started to automate anything by then. If it really doesn't interest you, then it doesn't interest you, but I might recommend giving it more of a shot and at least trying to get to the point of building an actual factory (that, or watching an episode or two of a playthrough to see more experienced players take that proper dive into it), since that's the real meat of the game. Anything to do with manual mining or hand crafting is basically just a crutch to use until you set things up properly.

Zeus posted...

A small subsect of recent games

Unfortunately, it's not that small. It's most of the AAA space (virtually all AAA multiplayer games, which is most AAA games because they're still trying to push the "nobody wants single-player" angle) and almost the entire F2P market (even the stuff that isn't mobile shovelware). Pretty much any game that benefits from retaining an active player base (whether through direct monetization, or indirectly because an active player base is a prerequisite for new players to jump on board) is going to be trying to keep players engaged, which inevitably means some manner of psychological manipulation. Most single-player games will also see similar mechanics included, since if they don't, people are going to be more inclined to play games that do make them feel like they're accomplishing something.

Again, though, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Having a sense of progression and a feeling of being rewarded is fun. This is why RPG mechanics have become so popular, and more recently, why rogueli(k/t)es are such a big slice of the indie market (and are often judged on their meta-progression systems). Rewards and manipulation often go hand in hand, but ultimately, that's the fundamental concept of selling games in the first place (promise people the reward of a fun game to manipulate them into giving you money for it), which is not inherently bad. It's something that needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and there's a lot of subjectivity involved in determining what is acceptable and/or enjoyable.

It's also not a new thing. It's being applied in a lot of new ways, but these same principles of providing infrequent rewards to keep players engaged was basically the driving force behind the the entire MMO genre (whether funded by subscriptions or microtransactions), and before that, it funded arcades by dangling the "you'll do better next time" carrot in front of players. There's plenty of room to argue that it's always been abusively manipulative, but it's definitely not a new problem.

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