Lurker > mrmallard

cuh posted...

What are the birds pronouns?

My money's on "chirp chirp chirp (eats worm)"

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

...did Full Throttle post pages from the phone book?

*reads up*

oof

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

CableZL posted...

I probably spent more hours playing gen 4 than any other.

Me too, because it was longer and slower than Emerald. When all was said and done, I had 200 hours on my sole Platinum save file - partially because I wanted to port over Pokemon from Emerald, and partially because I had a friend with Pearl so I got to trade for the first time ever.

I prefer the flow of Emerald. It feels like it has a higher framerate or something - it's a smooth, good-looking game that doesn't waste your time. I didn't appreciate Sinnoh in comparison because everything from the grander scope of the story to the slower battle system felt like it was wasting my time.

Like, I don't hate Sinnoh and I wouldn't mind a remake, but I would just as easily prefer gens 1-3 getting ported to the Switch like how the first two generations got ported to the 3DS. That, or their remakes. Those are my games, and Sinnoh simply wasn't.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

Dingydang166 posted...

This reminds me of that Always Sunny episode.

The Extreme Makeover episode where they take a migrant family hostage and destroy their stuff?

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

One last bump

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

Every single this season was fire. The ones I liked the least were Momentary Bliss and Strange Times, and even they were alright. They grew on me.

The biggest shame is Friday the 13th. I was a big supporter of it, it took me a few listens but it became one of my favorite singles and arguably my favorite Damon-Lite song in the discography. And then I learned that Octavian got dropped from his label for beating his girlfriend because people were laughing about Gorillaz predicting it, with the band members looking all hurt in the video. I went to bat for Friday the 13th, and I don't feel comfortable supporting it now.

Still - Song Machine is the best Gorillaz album since Plastic Beach. If they make a Volume 2, it's going to be really fucking hard to top this one.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

*spoilers*

My favorite joke this season was where Paul has a back spasm in a gay bar and a guy gives him a bear hug to fix it, and when he drops him back on his feet Paul exclaims "is it in?!"

Hugh Dancy's character has been pretty good. Adam's becoming a worse character with every episode, I'm split on Sean and I miss Marlene. The first season has big one-off energy, like the whole appeal is that Cathy has terminal cancer and hasn't told anyone yet, and by keeping the show as wacky as it is while Cathy's seeking treatment, the formula has changed. That, or there's just not enough focus on Laura Linney.

It's like, the big comedic forces of the first season were Cathy, Marlene and Sean. Marlene has been reduced to a plot device, and Sean's storyline has changed drastically - so to make up the difference Adam has gotten more of a storyline and Paul has picked up the comedic slack. The issue is that Adam is so unlikeable at the moment that his storyline is arguably the worst part of the show, and I just don't like Paul's actor. I could buy him as a jilted, negligent husband at the whims of a fate he has no idea about, and his character's devotion to his wife is admirable. But I just don't like his delivery, and it feels like he has the same cadence all the time y'know. That was fine for a season where Cathy was the main focus, but he's sharing the focus with her and I don't enjoy the show so much with him in the picture to such a large degree.

I understand, you can't make a show about someone dying of terminal cancer and never have them tell their loved ones. The process Cathy goes through, to the point where she does tell everyone in her life, is a great arc for that first season. The issue isn't that the show isn't the same. The issue is that it's less life-affirming goofiness with Laura Linney and more of Oliver Platt phoning in a performance and the kid character being an even bigger prick with each passing episode.

And that's awkward to say, because Oliver Platt gave me the biggest laugh of the season. It was a great unexpected joke.

Season 2 feels like a retool out of necessity, and it didn't stick the landing. Cathy's friend isn't great. I miss characters who didn't make the transition. And it doesn't feel like Cathy is spreading her wings as much as she used to. Granted, she was being incredibly reckless in the first season when her wings were stretched as far as they could go, but it's scenes like her coaching the swimming team that capture the flare of her character and there's not enough of that in season 2.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

Careful TC, you might get sued.

RIP Apollo Legend

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

Dang, I was hoping they'd be keeping the musical guests. The Muppet Show and the Sonny and Cher show are the two things I want to watch as an adult with all the music and stuff intact.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

FortuneCookie posted...

What's next after that? Daisy Ridley teaches Lisa to be a Jedi? One of the Avengers stops by?

Christ, you're cynical. I could see something like this happening in a Treehouse of Horror, admittedly, but this is just pissy.

FortuneCookie posted...

Watch them do an episode where Homer gets replaced by himself from another dimension and everyone just shrugs their shoulders at it.

Speaking of Treehouse of Horror - there's a segment in one of the later ones where the original 80's Simpsons designs come back, and they're treated like two individual beings.

There's also the end of Send in the Clones, lol

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

On top of the progressive angle, it's important to note that the Simpsons cast is in their 70's right now. People like Dan Castellaneta and Harry Shearer can't keep 20+ voices up forever, and the more voices they replace going forward, the more well equipped the show is gonna be in the unfortunate event of one of the main cast members dying.

You can hear it in their voices. A little less stress going forward is a good thing.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

Dark_Garioshi posted...

but there is time travel in that game

At least you already know, lmao. It's at the very end of the game and the bulk of the time travel shenanigans in the game are fake. The actual time travel is just the cherry on top.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

There's a DS game with that plot twist. Giving away the game/franchise would be a lame spoiler.

If you don't care, it's Professor Layton and the Unwound Future.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

teep_ posted...

So does TC...?

Johnny's probably got more of a handle on Trey, and trusts his take because of that. It's all good, I don't think I have bad blood with Johnny or anything - a friendly face giving their own two cents on a topic can go a long way.

Lorenzo_2003 posted...

Ok, well, that sucks.

They say the problem with democracy is sometimes people vote for the person you dont like.

Absolutely, but you'd have to be pretty ridiculous to go "my elected official deserves to take a holiday instead of leading the state/country through a time of crisis". Bush got criticized because he was reading a storybook to schoolchildren when 9/11 happened, and when he was told about what happened, he finished the story before leaving - but when Australia is on fire or when snowstorms in Texas are killing dozens of people and causing outages, we're okay with our officials literally leaving to go on holiday when things are at their worst?

This isn't a matter of "someone got elected I don't like". This is a matter of "a figure of authority who demands respect for their position of power fled a crisis to go on vacation, leaving their constituents to suffer through a major crisis". This would be fucked up if AOC organised a trip to the Bahamas just before NYC got hit by a hurricane. It'd be fucked up if half of California was on fire, and the governor chartered a 2 week holiday to Scotland to clear their head.

I just think it's fucked up that in the wake of a serious, deadly catastrophe that affects thousands of people at least, the people who we've voted into power can't be assed to show some solidarity and leadership to get their constituents through a time of crisis. It's fucked up that when thousands of people can't escape hellish conditions, and there are natural and/or artificial forces that are putting them in harm's way, people in positions of power choose to go on holiday with the full knowledge of what's about to happen to the people they represent. Whether I support them or not, that's a fucked up thing to do.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

...except it was our prime minister, comparable to your President, who left the country in a time of hardship and need to take a holiday.

Australia's 2020 bushfires were the worst ones in recorded history. It's estimated that over 1 billion animals were killed in the blaze, and it put a sizable dent in the already endangered koala population. Entire towns were annihilated in these fires, with people having to sail a short distance out into the ocean to escape the blaze in the most extreme of circumstances.

The blame for these once-in-a-lifetime bushfires was split down party lines. For the Liberal National Party - our conservative government who've been in charge for over a decade - people blamed their yearly cuts to the Rural Fire Service, which led to staff downsizing, relevant firefighting equipment becoming obsolete and the flow of equipment slowing considerably. Because of this, when the bushfires did hit, our fire services were overwhelmed.

This is bolstered by reports from former RFS staff members which predicted another catastrophic bushfire event as early as 5 years before it happened. Due to underfunding and cuts, the former head of the RFS predicted the 2020 fires within a year of when the actually took place. The government refused to heed his warnings, and they kept cutting funding from firefighters.

The blame that was levelled at the Labor Party and the Greens - our centre-left and left-wing parties respectively, the latter of who is endorsed by the former in the same way that the far-right Nationals are endorsed by the center-right Liberals - is that because of policies effected by the Greens, backburning was restricted for environmental reasons and this led to a build up of dry wood, dead plants and other fuel sources that fed the 2020 bushfires.

Keep in mind, though, that our parliament has a majority of Liberals and Nationals, and that affects what laws pass. To paint the 2020 bushfires as the Greens going mad and screwing the country with well-intentioned nonsense is to state that they abused power that they don't have in the senate. It should also be known that the Nationals have something of an iron grip in regional Australia, and the negligent policies that led to widespread destruction went through the Nationals.

So we had our worst bushfires in recorded history. Both sides blame each other. Over a billion animals have died, and it's all but certain that multiple species of flora and fauna have gone extinct thanks to large swathes of our forests burning to the ground.

Where was our prime minister?

He was in Hawaii.

For context: despite referring to them as the 2020 bushfires, the internet states that they started in June of 2019. My impression was that they began in September 2019, and November was the point where they got really bad - but the worst bushfires in the recorded history of Australia started in June, and burned straight through into May of 2020.

I think it's safe to say that we knew by December that we knew this was the Big One. Scott Morrison left the country in December, without telling anyone, to have a holiday with his family in Hawaii.

We were lucky in that we only had 34 direct casualties thanks to the bushfires. However, we had an additional 450 deaths from smoke inhalation and the like - civilians and firefighters alike. But while those people got sick with what would eventually kill them, or died outright, our leader was sipping cocktails out of coconuts in Maui.

There are two backlashes I want to bring up in response to this.

The first one was when Scott Morrison cut his vacation short after he got called out, and visited some of the most affected areas of the nation for some good PR. I'd like to tell you that it was out of a sense of obligation and goodwill, but this man is on camera taking people's hands and shaking them when they don't give them willingly, while they ask where he was while their homes burned to the ground and how he was going to help them. He refuses to look them in the eye. There are also firefighters who refuse to be a part of his PR shenanigans.

https://youtu.be/CSSjxsmlkVM

The second backlash occurred in response to a payment dispute for the RFS. The Rural Fire Service depends on volunteers, even moreso since their budget has been getting cut over the past decade. So there were some people who were fighting bushfires for months at a time, who weren't getting paid and who couldn't work a job on top of 16 hour days battling bushfires. The public discourse argued that the people who had been fighting the worst bushfires in Australia's recorded history for months at a time deserved compensation for the work they were missing. The Liberal National party refused.

So keep in mind - the man who went on holiday as Australia burned to the ground was opposed to compensating the people who gave months of their lives to try and contain those fires.

It was only through public condemnation and pressure from Labor, the Greens, the Liberal party itself and even a handful of Nationals did Australia's firefighters get a pittance in the first place.

I see something similar happening now with Ted Cruz. Texas is weathering what looks like the worst snowstorm in recent memory. Businesses and rich neighbourhoods have fluctuating power - but parts of Texas don't have any power at all, and they haven't had power for days. Children are dying in trailer parks despite being bundled up with family members. Homeless people have almost certainly been dropping off, and more will continue to die from exposure.

And your senator, the man who the people of Texas elected to look out for their best interests, has left the country for greener pastures.

This disregard for your lives, for your plight, is an indication of Ted Cruz's disconnect from his constituency. It shows his priorities. On top of the COVID denialism and far-right pandering, you need to make this stick to him, because otherwise he's going to get re-elected. And the next time something happens that puts your life at risk, when something comes along that can and will kill you without a second thought, Ted Cruz will do everything in his power to remove himself from the situation and leave you to die. And then he'll come back with a greasy smile on his face and pay himself on the back for leading the people of Texas through a crisis.

These scumbags need to be called out for what they are - traitors. Ted Cruz is a traitor to the people of his state. Scott Morrison betrayed his country. Both men put aside their duty to their fellow man, the responsibility afforded to them by the faith of their constituents, to look after their own self interest while the people who voted them into power died in agony.

The next chance you get to vote Ted Cruz out, you need to take it. People were going to die whether ScoMo or Ted Cruz stayed where they belonged, but what matters is that these people show solidarity with the people they represent. That they aren't so flippant with the lives of people who died, that they're committed to steering this ship through the good times and the bad. That they have our best interests in heart as our elected officials.

If they jump ship the first chance they get to flounder around in tropical paradise while people die, then they aren't fit to decide what's in our best interests and they need to be voted out. It's not a case of deciding between whether to save the many or the few, it's not a greater moral quandary that a leader has to shoulder. It's whether they wanted to represent the people who put their faith in them, or if they wanted to gratify themselves.

And both men chose to gratify themselves.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

It's a good one. Can't believe they gave Harry Potter AIDS.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

AloneIBreak posted...

Leftist Twitter likes to ponder and discuss the possibility that 2+2=5. The arguments are fascinating.

Can you give us an example of this? I don't doubt that there's a lot of reaching to get to more extreme outcomes the further left you go, but I want to know what arguments you've seen that come across to you as people trying to make 2+2 equal 5.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

I'm a recent fan. Breath of the Wild was a masterpiece, I knew enough about the mythos to love Hyrule Warriors but I also got so much more of a kick out of that game than I thought I would.

I've called myself a "newly minted Zelda fan" fairly recently. I'm looking forward to news about BotW2, I think games like Skyward Sword are interesting despite their backlash - look at the fan reception to Twilight Princess when it launched and when it got a remaster - and ultimately I would love to get a chance to play as much Zelda on the current hardware as I can get.

Wind Waker is the dream tbh. I hope they release a Zelda HD collection with Wind Waker, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword in time.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft

Flamazide. Didn't see him for months, then I heard he died after a stint of poverty.

He would show episodes of Baki the Grappler in a discord server I'm in, and he seemed to revel in the reactions of people who were seeing it for the first time. I really liked him.

If you've seen me around for long enough, you'll know that I speak my mind, even in the face of someone's death. I never liked Prelude2Entropy for example - I thought his death was a senseless waste of human life and I don't think he deserved to die, but in the wake of his death, I never sugar-coated the fact that I didn't like him. Look at how I'm talking about Rush Limbaugh right now, fuck that guy. I have no reservations about being blunt about dead people if I didn't like them.

Flamazide was a great dude, and a real g. I miss him every time I remember his death. I wish circumstances had been better for him, because the way he seemed to relish humor and company was infectious and good-natured.

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I can feel it in my bones, I'm gonna spend another year alone.
Now Playing: Persona 5, Minecraft