Lurker > ElatedVenusaur

Simon_Gruber posted...

Clams on Pizza? I've never heard of such a thing. Is that a NYC deal?

It definitely is a New Haven thing, at least. The famous Pepes white clam pie is white with clams, oregano, olive oil, garlic and pecorino romano cheese.
The clams have to be fresh though.

gunplagirl posted...

It's such a good system but trying to demonstrate it like this will just make it seem stupid.

Which of course is usually the goal. :l

Alsogreen peppers? Really? Theyre not even the best kind of pepper, and even the superior bell peppers arent top tier pizza toppings!

BilalPowell posted...

She thought Hillary would win and refused to retire under Obama

Yeah, IIRC, she was adamant about her successor being appointed by the first female president.
IMO, its a sign of decay that our septuagenarian and octogenarian politicians and jurists would rather die than yield their positions to younger, more capable people.
Natural endpoint of our cult of individualism.

The actual Sonic stages are good. Later on they wind up with a lot of death pits and sudden dangers, but they tend to be really generous with checkpoints. Sonic is pretty unwieldy, as well, but it mostly works.

The werehog isnt terrible, so much as tedious and repetitive for reasons already noted. But have another: the battle music track is really long, but plays from the beginning in every. single. combat. encounter. It sucks in part because its all too easy to realize how it could have been so much better.

Blightzkrieg posted...

Probably not. Little known fact is that early Christianity already made slavery taboo, but people just loopholed their way out of it whenever there was an opportunity.

Yeah: Christianity basically killed off slavery in Europe. It was common everywhere in Europe before Christianity spread.
It didnt prevent the Italian merchant republics from occasionally dealing in slaves, of course.

I cant think of any beyond Shin Megami Tensei V and Victoria III and Victoria IV.

Marcus does start to fade towards mid-late game, because his growths are genuinely not great theyre not bad though, but his bases are great and he has a horse, so hell never be bad. Fantastic utility, at worst.

Of course, hes garbage if youre comparing him to Seth

Robot2600 posted...

I always heard the medusa punishment was because she was vain, but that's probably just some Bulfinch bullshit to clean the myths up.

You might be mixing her up with Arachne, who thought she was a better weaver than any goddess and challenged Athena to a weaving contest. She then compounded matters by weaving a grand tapestry depicting the gods engaged in all kinds of debauchery that was accurate lulz , which further pissed Athena off, so Athena turned Arachne into a spider.

tommybel89 posted...

For anyone who has read the Iliad, there are definitely Greek gods interfering with the war and favouring either one of the 2 sides. Champions on both sides of the war are favoured by various gods. And yeah as someone mentioned, the Greek gods are just stand-ins for similar parallel gods from the neighbouring areas. Greece, Italy, the near East, Egypt, etc. All of them have sky gods, fertility gods, earth gods, etc. When Greece became a major power, their gods prevailed in popularity.

I wouldnt lump Egypt in with the others: their traditions were *a lot* different, even down to which Gods were important: for example, in most Indo-European pantheons, the Chief God is the Sky God, but in the Egyptian Pantheon its the Sun God.
It should also be noted that the Sky and Earth are female and male in the Egyptian religion, respectively.
It is true; however, that the Greeks got super into syncretism and equating their Gods with Gods from other pantheons my favorite is Dionysus and Osiris. and they wholesale adopted some, like Isis.

MJOLNRVII posted...

Probably not even two episodes. That one thing that looked like a sidescrolling game was neat fwiw, but I didn't even finish that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9vcTf3_nro
It makes me wish they made an actual game in this style, with Summer and Space Beth playable too. Then you could have four-player chaos.
Of course, it would inevitably be a crappy, low-effort cash-in.

I've watched the whole show and am looking forward to where they go with it next.

pogo_rabid posted...

They deserve zero praise on this. They've been kicking the can down the road for so many years, running scared of a nonexistent GOP in this state, that it's pathetic. The fact they're so cowardly and useless allowed the tiny GOP presence in this state to bully them as if we were a red state.

Listen: I don't much like the State Party either. In fact, I hate Ned Lamont, because he's basically an old-style Rockefeller Republican, and I also know this state will probably elect the first "moderate" Republican to survive the Republican primaries governor and he'll stay in office until he inevitably gets involved in some ridiculous corruption scandal, but late is a hell of a lot better than never.

At least the State Dems seem committed to getting this done, Republican obstruction be damned. It really is past time for weed to be legal, and I say that as some one who has never smoked it. One less thing the cops can harass people over, and the revenue will help sustain our (surprisingly robust) state government.

Lula getting back the presidency should help, at least a little bit, but that's still in the future.
Still, homophobia and especially transphobia are still massive problems abroad, and there are American organizations dedicated to making sure of it!

Hell, even I'm not familiar with Critical Race Theory, specfically. Is it related to Intersectionality, perhaps?
In any case, it seems to be the boogey-man term for teaching anything about how dreadfully racist the United States of America is and has always been. To be fair, this is true of all notable powers.

monkmith posted...

if they can fix the game so anything beyond the midgame crisis isn't a pointless slough i'd be happy.

I do really like the game, but Ive never actually played until the end game, in the entire time Ive owned it.
I mean, thats how it usually goes for me in similar games, but I actually finished a few Civ games, for example. Never felt the need to get close in Stellaris.

ScazarMeltex posted...

I like the concept of administration capacity. It makes sense, the problem with it is at the end game you can just blow past it and power through the penalties because you are so OP.

Yeah, it makes some sense: you need more administration to run a larger empire; but the problem is that this bureaucrat tax is actually more trivial the larger your empire is, because dedicating an entire planet to admin is completely inconsequential when you have 20 planets.

Oh, I forgot to mention: theyre going to rework the Shattered Ring start so its more progressive. They seem to want it to be less functional to start, but let you restore it more gradually, rather than all the action happening when you get Mega Engineering i.e. after the game is basically over.

Heh, you get 7 tradition trees, not 6.

In any case, I hope they do something about armies: either make them interesting or justabstract them away and save us the micro.

Its mostly in the wheelhouse of archaeology and anthropology, as very few pre-Columbian had writing. And, of course, European sources are incredibly biased and dismissive.
And the European settlers in North America were essentially encountering post-apocalyptic societies that, in many cases, bore little resemblance to what existed even 50 years prior.

Oddly, St. Pauls Rep. Betty McCollum has virtually identical views on Israel and the party never condemns her for expressing them.
I wonder why? LOL guess!

It's billed as the "Custodians Initiative" and it, well, it honestly sounds like something they should have been doing all along, but basically the game will now have a dedicated team(of varying size) that works on rebalancing, improving, and fleshing out existing game systems, features, and old DLCs.
The dev diaries:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/stellaris-dev-diary-215-gameplay-themes-balancing-considerations.1478888/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/stellaris-dev-diary-214-announcing-the-custodians-initiative-and-the-free-lem-update.1477655/
The 3.1 "Lem" update is planned for late summer/early fall, and is not currently planned to release alongside any DLC, so they plan on it being pretty ambitious. Some TL;DR notes from the dev diaries:

-They plan on adding additional tradition trees. Instead of having only six to choose from, they plan to enable you to pick from a pool, so you won't always be picking the same trees. Some new trees may be tied to specific DLC or specific civics or ethics though.
-They're adding special plant-themed traits and civics to the Plantoids Species Pack, which will also be usable by Fungoids.
-They're adding thematic civics to the Humanoids Species Pack, building on fantasy themes(the "Master Artificers" civic teased in the first diary is a dwarf-themed civic, for example). These will be available to any race as long as you have the pack(it makes no sense for these to be exclusive).
-They're thinking of ways to rework Admin capacity, Empire Sprawl, and Unity(they seem to be considering removing Admin Capacity entirely) to better penalize larger empires and make Unity a more interesting and desirable resource
-They're trying to teach the AI how to play and how they can prevent it from being caught in constant economic death spirals.
-They've mentioned a few other things they want to touch up, including, but not limited to: the War in Heaven, Crises, and some older events and event chains.

Hopefully they do this with all their games? EU IV is in dire need of some one tending the garden rather than just planting new features everywhere, even if Leviathan hadn't been such a mess.
Oh yeah, and just a reminder that Victoria III is real and will be tied with the first two for the title of the greatest game ever made.

I bought a fresh tilefish filet from work the other day(about 3/4 lb.) and cooked that up with some garlic, kale, cashews, and 2 red finger peppers. Salt, pepper, olive oil, and a dash of soy sauce for seasoning: it's a white fish, so I didn't want to overdo it.
It turned out really great! Nice and flaky and tender, and gave my little side a nice sea undertone.

UnholyMudcrab posted...

There's no win condition in the game at all. It ends under one of two circumstances: either the game year hits 1453 or you run out of dynasty members to succeed you. It's a lot less like Civ than Stellaris is.

Yeah, the only real objectives in Paradox games are Achievements, really.
Dumpstering the Ottomans as Ethiopia on my way to Prester John after several failed runs felt pretty great, I picked up Blessed Nation for having all the Coptic Holy Sites as a Coptic Nation along the way. I could close that up in contentment.
Of course, to get achievements, you have to play unmodded, and I would never want to play Stellaris without the latest AI mod and Gulli's Planet Modifiers.

I'm getting to know myself, I count!
But one of my best friends ever is a non-binary trans femme.

That looks delicious!

SwordMaster13X posted...

Until this election, I had no idea Yang actually lived in NYC. I thought he was from California because of his silicon valley vibe.

Didnt he just move to NYC to run for Mayor? I would hope the dude who literally just bought a place would have a good idea on what housing costs look like.
The progressive wing seems to be solidifying behind Maya Wiley. The fact that Morales got caught trying to bust her campaign workers union seems to have torpedoed her fair, next.

Zikten posted...

I learned something new about him recently

After his death, his wife and child were put in a dungeon and they never got out. Or they got executed or something

Roxana and the posthumous son she bore him were bandied about and ultimately met a grim fate, but along the way, little Alexander was co-king with Alexander the Great's developmentally disabled brother, who was enthroned as Philip III. He also had a possible bastard son named Heracles.
They were all murdered in the end: Eumenes the Greek, who due to his heritage could never claim power in his own right, was the last to seek the restoration of Alexander's Argead dynasty, but he was defeated and executed by Antigonos Monophthalmus (One-Eye). Philip III Arrhidaeus was put to death by his stepmother Olympias. Cassander Antipatrid, who ruled Macedon, had Alexander IV and Roxana murdered to secure his hold on power. He also induced Polyperchon to murder Heracles, just to be thorough.

Yeah, but it didn't last. I wrote a paper speculating about his death once, and I, personally, settled on malaria.
I recommend "Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander and the Bloody Fight for His Empire" by James Romm if you want to learn more about the dissolution of Alexander's short-lived empire. At the time of his death, he was due to embark on a campaign into the Arabian peninsula.

They also spent ~$100 million to move their corporate HQ from Denver to Orange County.
Attributing the price increase to paying their staff more is just them being passive-aggressive by preemptively blaming any and all customer complaints about it on their staff.

Remember, you have to wait X+1 days where x=the number of days Biden has been in office lol before you can criticize Bidens handling of anything!
Though, honestly, seems weird and bad that Garlands DOJ is mostly carrying Bill Barrs legal water.

I got shot down recently. It went fine: she said something that made me think she liked me, and I asked her if she wanted hang out. She demurred. A week later, I brought up again, framing by asking her how she felt about it, and she looked me dead in the eye and said she didnt want to, she didnt know what we would do, and that she was seeing some one(I had, in a few occasions, made it known I thought she was attractive). I indicated my interest was not purely sexual true and she offered a willingness to do a group thing.
I shot that down, both because I have no intentions of trying such an undertaking and because I wanted her to know that I knew precisely what she meant. She responded by admitting she wasnt much of a planner.
Ill still say hi and bye and make the occasional polite conversation, but Im not going to let her confide in me, since were not friends.
Given that Im transitioning soon and theres little reason to believe shes into women, probably wouldnt have worked in n the long run. Not romantically, anyway.

Yes. Remember that Occupy happened and BLM started under Obama.
And I'm not sure that Obama, Clinton, or Biden would handle the matter much better/differently than Trump.

Our educational system isn't the best and there's an entire political party dedicated to spreading and believing falsehoods.
But probably the bigger factors are media consolidation and time. By the former, I mean virtually every major media outlet is owned by some massive corporation, and these media outlets collectively determine what ideas are to be presented as "plausible" and "serious", and which are not.
By the latter, I mean that most people who are struggling to make ends meet and spend 40+ hours working a week have too many other things to worry about to really invest their time in digging deep into our country's (innumerable) political issues. And, due to the above, a lot of the information out there is straight-up bad, and most of the rest presents only a limited range of solutions.

I wonder if Modi will care?

Happy Pride Month! This place sucks.

MC_BatCommander posted...

It was good in gen 1, not much point using it now

Yeah, for those who arent aware: in RBY, you dont lose a turn if you kill the target.

pogo_rabid posted...

Hot sandwiches are inherently superior to cold ones.

Also butter is usually better than mayo.
Both hold true in this instance.

I still wear my mask, because I know not all my coworkers are vaccinated yet and want to show solidarity with them and make them feel comfortable. I don't wear it outside anymore though.

Enjoy the ride.

awesome999 posted...

Wish I could go back in time and shoot Columbus between the fucking eyes, none of this would happen then

Eh, it was historical inevitability that the Old World would discover the Americas, with the attendant and inevitable apocalyptic pandemics it would unleash upon the Native American peoples.
But you should still shoot Columbus, dude was a monster.

matchboxsantana posted...

you're not wrong. But voters are still to blame too.

The typical blue voter thinks he needs to be woo'd and catered to, the candidate must be a cool, likable and righteous person that checks all of the boxes. Meanwhile the typical GOP voter just looks for the magic R next to the name.

People say "well, we have standards". Well, those standards are what will take us down the path of a single party authoritary rule, how's that for getting the right people on government?

Not having standards is what leads to the modern Democratic Party, wherein the voters support everything from a $15 minimum wage to some kind of universal healthcare to aggressively combating climate change to expansive early-voting and mail-in voting and the actual party has 8 entire senators who voted against a $15 minimum wage even when it had no hope of passing and the president abandons even minor reforms of the ACA.
But I suppose they just need to vote harder, what do we need, maybe another dozen Dem senators before we might be able to get a $15 minimum wage and a neutered public option? A party that does nothing for its constituents cannot expect any enthusiasm.

matchboxsantana posted...

Well yes but... I blame the maine and NC voters more.

This was the last chance to save democracy. This was the last chance to prevent something worse than trumpism to take the entire country down the drain. And they decided they wouldn't vote for those 2 dems because they're not saints. Fuck these voters too.

Don't blame the voters: blame the weak, aimless campaigns run by the DSCC's hand-picked candidates who were shepherded through their primaries with limitless funds and party support . Literally hundreds of millions of dollars were lit on fire. Blame the Party's lack of strong messaging.
Georgia was won precisely because Warnock and Ossof united around a clear, simple economic message that the party proceeded to muck up, because Democrats. Meanwhile, Sarah Gideon's blathering on about coming together and bipartisanship and how she respects Susan Collins or whatever.
And neither Gideon nor Cunningham were half as bad as Amy McGrath!

It's unfortunate, because 2 out of 3 Karens I've interacted with were nice(the third was nuts).

I don't want to hear any takes about him being a "necessary evil". If evil is necessary, the system is what's evil.

In any case, the very survival of our democracy is at stake, and all Manchin cares about is making sure he gets invited to Mitch's barbecue.

Gladius has a fantastic concept: you run a gladiator school that travels around competing in local competitions throughout not-Rome, not-Germania, not-Steppe, and not-Egypt in a low fantasy sort of setting.

But they shoehorned in a really vanilla Chosen One plot, cut a ton of classes, most of the fights are really samey, the class balance is terrible, and super obvious they ran out of steam and/or time after not-Rome and not-Classical Germany. I would love to see a version that got to spend enough time in the oven.

VayneSolo posted...

You can't have justice and fairness in a world with limited resources and a growing population. Of course, capitalism can only make things worse since it means allocating most of those resources to very few people.

To be fair, it's not like what came before was better.

As an amateur sociologist, I will hazard to say that society shapes us at least as much as we shape it. Probably more so.