Lurker > Antifar

Legalized weed
medicare for all
free public tuition
bolstering, not cutting, our safety nets

Is what it should be.
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It's like the 5th best US patriotic song. I don't feel strongly about this issue beyond that.
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Thoughts/questions/comments/concerns?
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Career is a little overwhelming at first with the various menus, but I think I have it sorted out

- From the start, you can race in four branches, which roughly correspond to level of bike: style/street/sport/pro. The big racing bikes aren't locked from you by progression, but they might be more than you can afford at first. You can also get credits outside of career, though.
- Each of these four branches then has further subcategories...which are actually pretty broad. It might just be "x type of bike, under 170 performance..." and you'll find that the available bikes are like 120-130 stock. It's the opposite approach to Forza's homologation thing; you have to upgrade your bike to be competitive
- You only get a decent amount of money to do this with if you medal in an event. This means 1st/2nd/3rd finishes, but there are more events than just races: time trials, team races, and the motorcycle version of Forza's autocross pop up too. Not reaching bronze level gives you basically no rewards; it's kinda frustrating when the AI's superior bikes make even a third place finish basically impossible.
- You don't have to complete a subcategory all at once, the way Forza 7's campaign has its series. There are 4-6 events for each, and can be taken in any order you want

Progression: There are a lot of things that have to be unlocked, even if you can use the superbikes from the get go
- Each branch starts with amateur, but you need a certain number of gold medals to open up higher levels (which I'm guessing mean better bikes, longer races, since AI difficulty is a separate factor)
- You're also awarded reputation points for reaching medals (significantly more for gold than Bronze, obvs), which are used (based on a Forza Horizon 1-style ranking list) to unlock invitational events and some sort of team challenge ladder thing
- Invitational events are one-offs that award new bikes if you win (these bikes are also available to buy)
- Also, medals (of all colors) go towards unlocking championships, which I'm guessing are more similar to the series in Forza's career? Haven't unlocked one yet

I'm not sure how I feel about all of this, but it's certainly different.
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So I sunk my teeth into career mode

and boy...it deserves its own post, because that structure sure is something

Thoughts on racing/the game in general

- No real big difficulties in handling so far, but also I'm not playing on the higher physics settings
- Even on easy (difficulty level 2 out of 6) the AI challenges me (partly because they have better bikes, which I'll get into later). They don't just fade into the background once you pass them.
- A couple of the fictional tracks I've raced suffer from the problems that Forza's have, where every turn is sweeping and the brakes don't matter. Maybe that changes with faster bikes?
- Looking behind you operates the way it does in Project Cars, where the camera swings around, and swings back, rather than just cutting from one angle to the other, like in Forza.
- In addition to rider view, there's a camera angle from inside a helmet, where you see out of a visor and the bike sounds are muffled. That's a nice touch.
- Even the loading screens have loading screens here. They aren't very long (quicker than Forza) but lol
- Rain looks awful. Honestly, it looks like there are jizz stains on the track. The graphics on the whole are okay, but the rain, awful.
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Are we caring about celebrities' political opinions today?
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ExtremeLuchador posted...

Screaming at a woman is domestic violence now.

The allegations against Rob Porter are not about screaming
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Counsel, dipshit.
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https://twitter.com/geneapseattle/status/963578206883213312
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Paper_Okami posted...

The NYT hired a nazi sympathizer and politico does this. JFC

Wapo also hired a dipshit today

https://splinternews.com/megan-mcardle-is-taking-her-ill-informed-technocratic-n-1822969895
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Turtlebread posted...

its not, especially since women dont even like sex

You're telling on yourself here
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/13/remington-bankruptcy-guns-trump-slump-sales

For 200 years, Remington has been one of the most famous names in guns, supplying arms to soldiers in the civil war, both world wars and to generations of gun enthusiasts. Now it has met its match: the gun-friendly presidency of Donald Trump.

After a golden era of sales under Barack Obama, Americas gun manufacturers are in trouble. Sales have tumbled, leaving the companies with too much stock on their hands and falling revenues. The crunch claimed its biggest victim this week when Remington filed for bankruptcy.

The move does not mean the end. Remington is using the USs chapter 11 bankruptcy law to offload $700m of its $950m in debt, and to restructure the company. But it does underscore the level of distress in the industry.

In December, American Outdoor Brands, the owner of Smith & Wesson, reported that its profits had fallen 90% year over year, from $32m to just $3.2m. Sales fell 36%. Last October, Sturm Ruger, the USs largest firearm manufacturer, announced its quarterly revenues had fallen 35%. Both companies will report their latest results shortly but neither is expected to announce a dramatic increase in sales.

They call it the Trump slump, said Robert Spitzer, a professor at the State University of New York at Cortland and the author of five books on guns.

Gun sales have become politicized to a great degree, he said. Gun purchases recently have been made not just because someone wants a new product but to make a statement; not just because of fears that there might be tighter regulation but also to make a statement against Obama.

With Trump in the White House, said Spitzer, gun sales had sharply defaulted to their long-term trend of declining ownership rates.

Gun ownership has been declining since the 1970s and there are now fewer gun owners than ever, said Spitzer. Fewer people are hunting, younger people are less interested in gun ownership and the gun industry has had little success in its attempts to appeal to women and minorities.

The US has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world with 88 guns for every 100 people. But just 3% of the population owns an average of 17 guns each, with an estimated 7.7 million super-owners in possession of 140 guns apiece.

The surge of gun purchases under Obama was largely driven by sales to existing gun owners. Sales spiked on Obamas re-election and after his calls for new laws in the wake of tragedies like the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults.

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Dreamer is the colloquial term for those immigrants to whom the DREAM act would have applied, or, more narrowly, the recipients of DACA.
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https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/13/immigration-visas-economics-216968

This system should be wiped away and replaced with a system of citizenship sponsorship for immigrants that we call a Visas Between Individuals Program. Under this new system, all citizens would have the right to sponsor a migrant for economic purposes.

Heres how the program would work: Imagine a woman named Mary Turner, who lives in Wheeling, West Virginia. She was recently laid off from a chicken-processing plant and makes ends meet by walking and taking care of her neighbors pets. Mary could expand her little business by hiring some workers, but no one in the area would accept a wage she can afford. Mary goes onlineto a new kind of international gig economy website, a Fiverr for immigrantsand applies to sponsor a migrant. She enters information about what she needs: someone with rudimentary English skills, no criminal record and an affection for animals. She offers a room in her basement, meals and $5 an hour. (Sponsors under this program would be exempt from paying minimum wage.) The website offers Mary some matchespeople living in foreign countries who would like to spend some time in the United States and earn some money. After some back and forth, Mary interviews a woman named Sofia who lives in Paraguay.

Sofia, who grew up in a village, has endured hardships that few Americans can imagine. She is eager to earn some money so that she could move to her nations capital city and get some vocational training. A few weeks later, Sofia arrives in Wheeling, after taking a one-week training course on American ways. If things dont work out, the agency that runs the website will find a new match for Sofia, and Mary will find someone new as well.

While the program might seem crazy at first, it would not be that different from the existing H1-B program, except that individuals like Mary rather than corporations like Google and Exxon would sponsor the workers. Second, the program is not that different from the au pair program run by the State Department, nominally under the J-1 cultural exchange visa program, but in reality a nanny migrant-labor program used by upper-middle class American families.

A Visas Between Individuals Program would extend the benefits of these types of immigration programs to everyone, rather than just to corporations and the affluent. It would also achieve the goals of both sides of the immigration debatebetter than their own proposals do. Immigrants would no longer have special privileges to sponsor family members, while working-class voters would enjoy dramatic benefits.

According to our calculations, a typical family of four could boost its income by $10,000 to 20,000 by hosting migrants. The reason is that migrants to the United States usually increase their wages many times, allowing them to pay as much as $6,000 to hosts for sponsorships (and our average family could sponsor up to four visas, one for each member).

This financial benefit for working families would be a larger increase in income than they have received over the last 40 years of economic growth. (Median household income in the United States was about $50,000 in 1977 and is roughly $59,000 today.) At the same time, a Visas Between Individuals Program would be true to Republican free-market and small-government principles by drastically reducing the role of government bureaucrats, who would merely run security checks on migrants rather than trying to evaluate their likely contributions to the economy.

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Kazi1212 posted...

Wheres her op-ed piece? took it down already?

They announced the hire today; I don't think she's written anything published yet
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https://twitter.com/quinnnorton/status/513088706807627776

For context: the NYT opinion section just hired her, people promptly found that she views a noted white supremacist and tosses around racial slurs.
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Right, a pathway to citizenship would by definition be a legal one.
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Same developer as Ride, IIRC
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Yes
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Our police and justice system already make decisions on what issues are priorities and which things are not. You can say that the deportation of dreamers would just be a cold application of law, but the law isn't coldly applied. And nor is it above criticism.
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Even just from my brief playtime I can tell they appreciate motorcycling (in a way that I don't). Like on loading screens they show you one of the bikes in game and give you a good amount of info on its design, legacy, etc.

Kinda like Forza 6 had an obvious appreciation of cars and racing history.
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SlugSh0t posted...

no just a mod deleted my other topic for some reason

But it's still there
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What am I looking at here?
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Am I seeing double
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Uncle Choad posted...

I like how you equate illegally entering a country with downloading a song.

The law is the law.
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Following the law to a T would be impractical and unhelpful in a number of situations, not just immigration. Deporting the Dreamers doesn't have a public interest that merits its cruelty, IMO.

Unless you support fines for everybody who goes 5 mph over the speed limit and jail time for internet pirates, you don't believe in the absolutist vision of the law you claim ITT
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So I think I've got the hang of handling my (pretty low level) bike via time trials, don't have time to get into much more until later.

Track list is curious: the game advertises 30, I only count 27 (with Nurburgring Nordschleife and GP circuit being counted as two). 17 real circuits, most of which only have one or two layouts, and then 10 fictional ones that have like 2-3 each.

There are only like 3 tracks that are in Forza.

Edit: 30 counts the three drag strips apparently
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It's very important that the president not be associated with sexual innuendo.
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I impulse bought it over the weekend, it arrived today, and is installing now. My thoughts so far: I wish it would install faster.
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God bless Tottenham Hotspur
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r4X0r posted...

Obama picks a portrait painter specifically because they like to portray anti white racism

[citation needed]
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The Shield is the more apt fictional comparison here
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Disband the BPD and start over.
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Waluigi7 posted...

I want it to be true solely because I think it would be funny.

It obviously won't matter to his supporters.

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Past games had like an in-game glossary of the history, no? This seems like a more interactive version of that.
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https://www.gamespot.com/articles/assassins-creed-origins-discovery-tour-is-a-smart-/1100-6456747/

Discovery Tour takes Origins' beautifully realised version of ancient Egypt and strips away many of the traditional gaming systems to present an experience that is entirely focused on exploration and education. Gone are the aggravated enemies and multi-part quests, instead replaced with hundreds of characters just going about their daily lives and the opportunity to gain deeper insight into the people, places, and culture of the time.

According to Ubisoft, its goal was to "make history everyone's playground ... and make ancient Egypt accessible to a broader audience." And it has done the legwork needed to realise this vision. Discovery Tour features 75 guided audio tours, making it feel like a virtual museum that players can walk around, all while having information gathered with the aid of experts delivered to them.

Players retain control of their character, which in Discovery Tour can be anyone from Bayek, protagonist of Assassin's Creed Origins, to Cleopatra or Julius Caesar, among others, so they're free to wander aimlessly and soak in the atmosphere or dip in and out of the tours as they please.

We spent some time with Discovery Tour (watch our gameplay video above) and came away thinking it's an experience that has a huge amount of potential, both as a unique way to present game worlds to people that love video games, and as a smart way to leverage the immense efforts put into creating them to reach a broader audience that may not be into games. Ubisoft told us that it has already tested Discovery Tour in classroom environments and found that it was useful in helping students learn about ancient Egypt, and this is an exciting avenue for video games to explore.

Where Ubisoft takes it from here is unclear, but we're keen to see the company head back into settings from previous games and give them the same treatment. Furthermore, we hope that other developers and publishers take note, as the idea of being completely free to explore and learn from worlds is incredibly enticing.

As previously detailed, Discovery Tour will be available on February 20 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. It is free for owners of the main game, but a standalone version will also be available on Steam and Ubisoft's UPlay service.

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darkjedilink posted...

Three different US Army Generals said it literally was PR's fault.

Did you read the article, or just see Puerto Rico and have a kneejerk response to what you thought the article would be about?
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I'm pretty sure he sucks, but I'm having difficulty remembering the specific way in which he sucks
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Uncle Choad posted...

I think he thinks that all conservatives support extremist views, but forgets that cutting a head off of somebody is a pretty extremist view.

You know nobody was actually decapitated, right?

Is Quentin Tarantino an extremist because he directed Kill Bill?
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Coffeebeanz posted...

Look man, if you don't like Musou games, don't fucking review them.

"If you don't like X, don't review it" seems like a bad practice
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Caution999 posted...

Like, yeah, if a menacing looking black guy walks in with a hoodie to 7/11 in the middle of the night, we might think "he's up to no good", and if Obama chooses a painter who once depicted the decapitation of a white person's head, we think "oh that's his right as a black man. Their ancestors were slaves and they are allowed to do this because we simply cannot identify with their culture and what they've gone through in their life."

w h a t
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I mean, there is the possibility of not relying on Youtube videos and podcasts to determine your life path
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Spooking posted...

_OujiDoza_ posted...

Huge cuts to welfare programs (SNAP/TANF/WIC, etc.)

Too many people take advantage of the system. We need checks and balances. Since we are not getting that, cuts will suffice.

Bill Clinton made cuts in 96. It made things worse.
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2015/06/19/welfare-reform-left-holes-in-the-social-safety-net-increased-deep-povery
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/moneybox/2016/06/how_welfare_reform_failed.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/the-end-of-welfare-as-we-know-it/476322/
https://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/welfare-reform-and-the-safety-net
https://www.revealnews.org/blog/why-are-more-families-desperately-poor-20-years-after-welfare-reform/
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Asherlee10 posted...

It isn't that I'm saying some white person isn't allowed to make controversial art about race, of course they can. However, the reaction isn't going to be the same given historical context.

So stop trying to say, "Well if Trump did that, then..."

Right. "If X was completely different, you would be reacting differently" is not the argument conservatives think it is.
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voldothegr8 posted...

So it's ok to be racist as long as a historical event happened that justifies it?

Is art depicting an individual of one race committing violence on an individual of another necessarily racist?
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Alternate, more shitposty response: I'm more concerned that this artist liked painting a war criminal.
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Are artists who depict violence off limits now? Do we have to reject Rubens because he painted the Massacre of the Innocents?
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r4X0r posted...

The plan will only be opposed because it's Trump proposing it.

I can't imagine why Trump specifically would provoke doubt regarding a food distribution plan
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/us/fema-contract-puerto-rico.html
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/opinion/trump-britain-libel-laws.html
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http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/12/news/economy/food-stamps-box-blue-apron/index.html

Think of it as Blue Apron for food stamp recipients.

That's how Budget Director Mick Mulvaney described the Trump administration's proposal to replace nearly half of poor Americans' monthly cash benefits with a box of food. It would affect households that receive at least $90 a month in food stamps, or roughly 38 million people.

"USDA America's Harvest Box is a bold, innovative approach to providing nutritious food to people who need assistance feeding themselves and their families -- and all of it is homegrown by American farmers and producers," said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in a statement. "It maintains the same level of food value as SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] participants currently receive, provides states flexibility in administering the program, and is responsible to the taxpayers."

Part of the president's fiscal 2019 budget blueprint, the idea immediately sparked concerns and questions among consumer advocates and food retailers. They feared it would upend a much-needed benefit for more than 80% of those in the program.

Here's how it would work:

Instead of receiving all their food stamp funds, households would get a box of food that the government describes as nutritious and 100% grown and produced in the U.S. The so-called USDA America's Harvest Box would contain items such as shelf-stable milk, juice, grains, cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans, canned meat, poultry or fish, and canned fruits and vegetables. The box would be valued at about half of the SNAP recipient's monthly benefit. The remainder of their benefits would be given to them on electronic benefit cards, as before.

The administration didn't detail exactly how families would receive the food boxes, saying states could distribute them through existing infrastructure, partnerships or directly to residences through delivery services.

The proposal would save nearly $130 billion over 10 years, as well as improve the nutritional value of the program and reduce the potential for fraud, according to the administration.

Consumer advocates, however, questioned whether the federal government could save that much money by purchasing and distributing food on its own. Also, they were concerned that families would not know what food they would get in advance nor have any choice regarding what they receive. Plus, it could be difficult for families to pick up the box, especially if they don't have a car.

"It's a risky scheme that threatens families' ability to put food on the table," said Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

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