Lurker > adjl

LurkerFAQs, Active DB, DB1, DB2, DB3, DB4, DB5, DB6, DB7, DB8, DB9, Database 10 ( 02.17.2022-12-01-2022 ), DB11, DB12, Clear

Board List	Page List: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ... 35
Topic	American tourist in Poland tells another tourist to go home
adjl 09/01/22 10:59:03 AM #26	SKARDAVNELNATE posted... And as I demonstrated in my screenshot, no, they are not. Then that's a weird quirk of how you've got the page displayed. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	American tourist in Poland tells another tourist to go home
adjl 09/01/22 9:27:56 AM #22	SKARDAVNELNATE posted... Also rules 3-6 are a secret so anything can be a violation. "Be especially mindful of the following" means, in this case, that the rules listed are a subset consisting of those that are particularly worth making note of in commenting on this particular instance. The full rules are listed in the sidebar, as others have pointed out. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	The universe threw me a bone today
adjl 09/01/22 8:21:01 AM #24	VampireCoyote posted... I think the sun would have killed them but Ill keep an eye out Not much kills bed bugs short of intensive fumigation. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Roommate finally publicly announced his relationship with an engagement post
adjl 08/31/22 3:52:23 PM #13	Jen0125 posted... I likely will not even be there that day. If he wants to destroy anything I have insurance and I'll just file a lawsuit against him. Fair. Not being there will probably be enough; the vibe I'm getting is less "smash stuff out of revenge" and more "sexual assault." --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Roommate finally publicly announced his relationship with an engagement post
adjl 08/31/22 3:37:38 PM #9	For real, make sure you've got at least one other person in the house with you when Dec 31st rolls around, and potentially change the locks afterwards. Everything you've been saying about how he's handling the situation has been rife with heebie jeebies, and while I don't necessarily want to assume he'll do something bad in response to having to officially cut ties with you, I can't help but suspect he might. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Rathalos! I choose you!
adjl 08/31/22 3:31:08 PM #3	GTurtlte posted... TIGREX GOOO!!!!!!! not gonna like. A pokemon X Monster hunter game be cool. If done right Indeed. There are quite a few Pokemon that would make excellent MH fights. I'd be less interested in the other way around (Pokemon gameplay with MH monsters instead of established Pokemon), but I'd definitely be interested in MH-style Pokemon. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Lol. The mods locked my topic
adjl 08/31/22 3:17:50 PM #11	ParanoidObsessive posted... Probably because it was flamebait. I'm kind of surprised they didn't just delete it outright. I'd call it flaming more so than flamebait. It's overtly insulting, not just trying to rile people up to get insults out of them. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Anime, Manga, VN, JRPG, Related Things Discussion Topic XCIX
adjl 08/31/22 3:15:24 PM #310	YoukaiSlayer posted... Anyway, I'm still on chapter 6 so I'm not going to read further. My bad, I thought you'd finished. I encourage not reading more of the other things I said, then, and this next spoiler block won't cover anything beyond there. YoukaiSlayer posted... That's kind of the thing though. It implies that reincarnating these people into new bodies isn't losing energy, it's gaining it somehow, completely flying in the face of thermodynamics. Like ultimately, they have all the energy and are just funneling it back into the system for what should be no gain, however, they do seem to be gaining. Hypothetically, I could see it not really being any different from farming animals for food: Some manner of plant life grows and is harvested, that's used to feed the animals so they grow up, then we eat them for energy. The implication, though, is that there's some nebulous "life energy" beyond that that is collected by the flame clocks and sustains Moebius and grants them additional powers, far beyond what they'd get if they just ate the people directly (or better yet, skipped the trophic level losses and just ate vegetables). Maybe there's some sort of spiritual energy that's gained over the course of a life similarly to how plants absorb the sun's energy, and that's what's being collected and consumed, but it still seems to me like there are issues with how closed the system of Aionios is, and there are a couple of consuls who make comments to the effect of suggesting that the world is dying because of how Moebius is exploiting it. YoukaiSlayer posted... I've also discovered how insane smash is. I don't actually fully understand what determines the damage it does. Using aquaball and sumo press (the soul hacker arts) I managed to over 10 million with a single smash, but Noah with his unlimited sword's launch+smash did way less, only like 5 million at roughly the same damage percent in the chain attack. My only guess is that when used in a fusion art, it takes the damage value of both combined to scale the smash damage? The more than 10 mil smash was even done by a healer, not an attacker, and without any damage boosting skills. I guess I should test smash at some point, or just look it up, to try and figure out exactly how to manage it. Can practically oneshot superbosses. Yeah, Smash is ridiculously broken this time around. I don't know the exact formulas, but I know damage is highest at the beginning of a launch (which makes it particularly good in chain attacks because launch duration doesn't tick down), and it does take the damage of any fused arts into account (I believe in the form of applying whatever multiplier is used to determine the damage of the Smash itself to the damage of the other art, since there are multiple damage lines for fused Smashes, so this may actually end up being patched out). That all adds up to mean that fusing a Smash art to an art with a high damage ratio can pretty easily push the damage cap (which is just shy of 10 million), if you're set up properly. It's one of the greater strengths of Kevesi attacker classes, since they can set Lost Vanguard's Smash art as a master art. That's somewhat balanced out by Agnian attacker classes generally being better (better skills, more reliable access to Power Charge), but if you're looking for game-breaking damage, Smash is the way to go. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	The universe threw me a bone today
adjl 08/31/22 2:14:14 PM #12	Hopefully nobody takes the recycling bin home because they misinterpret the sign. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Student loan forgiveness plan
adjl 08/31/22 2:13:44 PM #37	KodyKeir posted... Something about 83% of well paying jobs needing a college education to be considered for, not 1956 anymore... Though, to be fair, that's at least partially a consequence of how many people go to college. If there were fewer college-educated applicants, there would be fewer jobs demanding college educations when they don't actually need them. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	The universe threw me a bone today
adjl 08/31/22 2:07:21 PM #10	VampireCoyote posted... it said FREE i picked that sucker up and carried it across the street That's fun. Do you have any plans for your new sign? --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	The universe threw me a bone today
adjl 08/31/22 1:15:02 PM #3	What did the free sign say? --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	I got stood up today :(
adjl 08/31/22 12:29:13 PM #75	Generally speaking, just getting laid is easier for women than men, but a lot of that stops being true if you add in the caveat of "with somebody who knows what showers and basic manners are" because there are generally more guys than girls that don't hold themselves to any standards of basic hygiene before trying to find hookups (which is mostly a product of centuries of cultural pressure for women to make themselves desirable). Finding a meaningful relationship is more or less equally difficult for men and women, with each facing some challenges and/or having advantages that the other does not. Being stood up or ghosted is pretty much a universal worry; I don't think there's much by way of gender bias there. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Which of these bro words do you use the most to address people?
adjl 08/31/22 11:18:57 AM #27	I use "brother" to refer to actual familial relations and as a title for monks, but that's about it. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Anime, Manga, VN, JRPG, Related Things Discussion Topic XCIX
adjl 08/31/22 11:17:40 AM #307	~~YoukaiSlayer posted...~~ It feels like there is actually a super easy solution for energy that presumably wouldn't make people upset. Let people reincarnate into 10 year bodies, die, then keep their memories and bring em back. At that rate basically everyone is immortal and moebeus keep getting energy. The only things bad about the system is that they have to fight for no reason and that they don't keep their memories, except when they do in colony omega, and also keep their bodies that already become husks, but were somehow unhusked, or something? As a fundamental matter of thermodynamics, there really isn't a solution for energy within the paradigm Moebius established. The fundamental concept of "let people kill each other, then reincarnate them, then repeat, all while skimming a little life energy off the top to sustain ourselves" is a closed system out of which Moebius keeps siphoning energy, which means it will eventually run out because of the first law of thermodynamics. Whatever tricks are employed to improve the speed at which life energy can be harvested (as was happening in Omega or that colony where everyone is a first-termer), they're never going to be able to get out more energy than was involved in creating those lives in the first place. While it's never explicitly stated, I expect this is part of where the annihilation events come in: By turning large volumes of matter into energy, the deficit is fixed and the world can continue to function, though obviously this is still a finite solution. That said it's really never implied beyond an outside understanding of physics that that is the case. In-game, it's implied that annihilation events are a consequence of the parallel worlds being held in stasis just before they would have naturally annihilated, and they happen when too much of one world leaks through into the other (as indicated by the black fog, which arose for similar reasons in Future Connected). This is where the power of interlinking comes from (for both Ouroboros and Moebius): It taps into the power of Origin to bring entities from the two worlds closer together than they otherwise could get, releasing significant amounts of energy by holding them just on the brink of annihilation. This is also why there's a time/energy limit, since that state can only be maintained for so long before the pair collapses in on itself and annihilates. I've seen some other theories that talk about the black fog as an autonomous natural entity that tries to erase dimensional abnormalities, such as the remaining Telethia (pieces of Zanza, who shouldn't exist outside of the memory space that Xenoblade 1's world occupied) in Future Connected, but I'm not sure if that means the black fog causes the annihilation events or is just associated with them. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Anime, Manga, VN, JRPG, Related Things Discussion Topic XCIX
adjl 08/31/22 10:52:44 AM #306	YoukaiSlayer posted... It doesn't at all. She could have done that in a way that didn't involve all that garbage. She also could have done that at any time to any person undergoing homecoming. She could have used her brain sync super power to tell noah and friends. Not to mention the party has dispatched like a half dozen moebeus at this point. There's plenty of ways for her to die and avoid the flow or more practically she should help us until we win and then she can fade away. How many innocent kevesi and agnian and lost number soldiers died during that month we were imprisoned? She stole a month from the rest of the cast who only have like a year or two left anyway. Had she done it to a random other person undergoing Homecoming, odds are N would have clued in and just stabbed that person the old-fashioned way. By swapping with her alternate self - who understands her feelings, beliefs, and intentions because she holds the same ones - putting together a convincing ruse becomes significantly more feasible. I could also very easily believe that M was only able to perform a complete swap because Mio is her alternate self and there were so many pre-existing similarities to help line everything up and avoid conspicuous resistance. Homecomings are also pretty rare, and I don't think it's normal for M to hang out at them (I could be wrong, but I don't think N was present at the Kevesi one we saw), so attending a normal one would arouse suspicion. Finding an opportunity to do that at the same time as there's a set of Ouroboros candidates running around that stands a genuine chance of winning (if there weren't, N would massacre most of the world in his ensuing rage) seems astronomically unlikely, to the point that her seizing this one good opportunity makes perfect sense. YoukaiSlayer posted... ~~N's beyond redeaming. How can you redeem eons of genocide? He doesn't deserve to have his time move again.~~ ~~Noah~~ is N's redemption, just as Mio is M's. They represent their past selves' regret over making the wrong choice (to become Moebius, in N's case, and M's failure to keep N from falling to such despair). The only reason Noah didn't fall to despair like N did is because M made sure Mio was around to keep him on the right path and remind him that he was fighting for something so much bigger than his personal feelings (through the flashback sequence). He passed that test, and in doing so redeemed N by re-committing to the goal of saving the world instead of being led astray by despair (seen when N merges with Noah after the fight with him in Origin, which is loosely analogous to Egil in the Mechonis Core fight in that it amounts to "we want the same thing, let go of your hate so we can actually achieve it"). Basically, Noah had to watch Mio die and overcome that, because failing to do so is what gave birth to N. If Noah had failed that test, he'd just have become another N (or merged with the existing one, I'm not sure). If Noah had been given an easy out and Mio's life had been extended without him ever truly having to face was her death would mean for him, he likely would have faltered when faced with the reality that Ouroboros had to separate the worlds and say goodbye to each other. YoukaiSlayer posted... There's then a bit of technical mess up. When the blade calling was sealed, it wasn't stopped completely, it just disappeared before being fully formed. Seems very plausible to at least try to attack in that moment when it's partially formed to destroy the iron bars. Also, they explain earlier but the circles on lanz armor is because it's a powerframe and the circles are still lit up so he and probably sena should have been able to bash down that door without calling blades. Especially if it was just iron. The gaps are also easily large enough for the smaller party members to slip through, especially the nopon. The whole "power frame" thing is kind of a silly mcguffin to begin with that only exists to address the "plot hole" of how much more powerful a nation of blade/flesh eaters would be than normal people (never mind that those normal people were blocking hits from 400-ton robots on a regular basis), but I'm pretty comfortable accepting that whatever was done to seal their blades and Ouroboros powers also weakened power frames and blade genetics by enough to give the observed effect. Even if it hadn't and they were able to escape somehow, they'd near-instantly be arrested again, so call it a matter of convenience to avoid animating that process. YoukaiSlayer posted... Why did the lost numbers not show up until right AFTER the eclipse? The had like a week of prep time and showed up minutes too late for no reason and didn't even attempt to destroy the annihilator cannon. If they'd destroyed the annihilator before the eclipse, it would have tipped N off to M's betrayal, since they should have no way of knowing about it. They should also have no way of knowing about the homecoming or even that the party is still alive, given that everyone that could have known about the outcome of the battle was captured afterwards, plus the whole event was so heavily guarded that attacking before the chaos of Noah's breakthrough would have been pretty suicidal. YoukaiSlayer posted... Finally, why didn't noah attempt to draw lucky seven? It's not a blade. Riku even tells him to draw it, Noah breaks free for a moment, and...doesn't even try. Wtf? I was so angry watching that. Every damn xenoblade has to ruin it's story in the latter half. Presumably because he was too overcome by despair to try (especially in the context of "here's the flute that's given you such comfort and peace for your entire life, use it to destroy your new favourite thing), but it also ties into the nature of the Sword of Origin (which seems to be tied to Lucky Seven because Riku is just ordinary nopon): It's a weapon meant to destroy the world that Moebius created. Until he truly committed himself to doing that - regardless of what he would have to lose in the process - he wasn't able to use it. It's never outright stated, but N seems to have had access to a sword of similar power (which is why Z was so personally interested in him) that ended up being corrupted by his desire to protect the present. It stands to reason that the replacement that was built into subsequent Ouroboros stones was designed to prevent that corruption by only becoming available to those that were sufficiently determined. I'm also not sure where you're getting that every Xenoblade ruins its story in the latter half. 2 basically doesn't even have a story until the last ~25% of the game, unless you were really attached to "we're going to steal your girlfriend because we're evil" "Oh no please don't steal my girlfriend." Virtually all of 2's story value is loaded into huge dumps of worldbuilding and exposing characters' motivations (particularly on the villains' side) and having the party reconcile that information with their beliefs, and almost all of that happens in or after chapter 7. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Breaking news: Jesus didn't die for your sins
adjl 08/28/22 10:27:05 AM #10	Lokarin posted... I've actually heard from religious people (r/debatereligion) that "because religion isn't fiction, being accurate to the canon doesn't matter" :/ Explicitly saying that it's more important to be consistent with fictional canons than definite fact? --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Breaking news: Jesus didn't die for your sins
adjl 08/28/22 9:58:29 AM #3	I feel like this could stand to have more context to enhance the funny. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Rightwing meme time!
adjl 08/28/22 9:57:15 AM #220	Step 1: Apply for PPP loan Step 2: Use PPP loan to pay off student loan Step 3: Have PPP loan forgiven --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Avis charged a customer $6,000 for driving car 24,000 miles in 3 days
adjl 08/28/22 9:55:10 AM #6	24,000 miles in 72 hours is an average of 333.3 mph. Unless they pulled a Ferris Bueller and jacked the car up while spinning the wheels as fast as they could possibly go continuously for the entire time (which is a logistical feat in its own right given the need to refuel) and the car was a high-end sports car that is actually capable of achieving those speeds (which I'm pretty sure Avis doesn't rent), I'm gonna guess this either didn't happen or something went wrong. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Remember when UAC was a major criticism of Windows Vista?
adjl 08/28/22 9:48:56 AM #11	Callmege posted... Remember when they basically repackaged Windows Vista SP1 as Windows 7 and every thought it was amazing? It was a bit more than that, but yeah. SP1 was a massive improvement over Vista's initial release, but I can understand people who hadn't made the switch to Vista yet being hesitant to accept "don't worry we fixed it." Present it as a new version of the OS around which the general discourse is positive, though, and you'll get more people willing to give it a shot. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	surprised the majority are only at the 100-500 range in number of steam games...
adjl 08/26/22 4:36:10 PM #18	I'm pretty stable in the 350-400 range. In my early days of using Steam, I'd pretty frequently buy games in which I was interested but had no immediate plans to play just because they were discounted by what I thought was a good amount. Over time, my standards for "a good deal" have risen quite a bit and my backlog has grown to the point that I've mostly stopped buying games unless it's either such a good deal that I don't expect to ever see it that cheap again (usually because it's in a bundle) or it's one that I'm really interested in and do intend to play in the foreseeable future. That means my library has mostly stagnated before hitting 500. It makes some amount of sense to me that most people experiencing the same progression of standards would end up in the 100-500 range. It really doesn't take very long at all to rack up 100 Steam games if you go in with the attitude of "That's a good price for something I've been meaning to pick up," especially when bundles get thrown into the mix, but I'd expect that enthusiasm to be tempered somewhat before the 500 mark, at which point library growth slows down dramatically. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Has anything been done to prevent , another 10k in student loan forgiveness..
adjl 08/26/22 4:22:49 PM #7	GameLord113 posted... Student loans are predatory as is and should have an interest rate of 0%. I'd be okay with having an interest rate that would allow them to keep up with inflation, so as to avoid having them be a loss, but government student loans absolutely should not charge interest for the sake of turning a profit. That is, in fact, a tax that explicitly targets the lower and middle classes (those who can't just pay out of pocket for college). Private loans are another matter, since making a profit is their only reason for existing, but if government loans are available that have lower interest rates and cover the costs of most universities (which need to be regulated down in their own right), that competition will keep them from getting out of hand outside of cases where they're needed to pay for more expensive universities (in which case the existence of cheaper alternatives will help to keep them in check and/or encourage those who would have to take on unsustainable debt to go elsewhere). --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	2nd Amendment
adjl 08/26/22 4:05:41 PM #32	ParanoidObsessive posted... Which is sort of the point. The solutions might work in cities, but there's a hell of a lot of the US that isn't city. Certainly more so than is the case in Europe. So unless you intend to force everyone into the US into metropolitan areas at gunpoint, those sorts of solutions will always be less effective here than elsewhere. Step 1: Fix the cities Step 2: Establish suitably-sized park & ride lots outside of each city to allow rural visitors to take transit into the city so there isn't as much car infrastructure needed An oversimplification? Obviously. But so many people take an all-or-nothing attitude toward the issue, with the philosophy that anything short of fixing all the problems perfectly right away isn't worthwhile. That's just not a sensible way to approach the matter (or most of life, really); successfully creating any viable alternatives will improve local traffic volumes and take a step toward making everything work better. The goal doesn't have to be "no more cars anywhere," just to employ options that aren't cars in situations where using cars (and especially forcing cars to be used) is a bad idea. Heck, even the park & ride idea isn't altogether necessary for visitors. The vast majority of traffic within cities is a consequence of city residents driving to their jobs somewhere else in the city. Traffic coming in from so far out that transit solutions aren't viable is such a small minority that you don't really need specialized solutions for handling it. ParanoidObsessive posted... Part of the problem is that US infrastructure (and multiple facets of our society and culture) grew up at the same time cars did, so cars are so integrated into our infrastructure at a deep level that you'd basically have to social engineer and deconstruct dozens of different and seemingly unrelated aspects of our lifestyle to undo it. Not just streets or transport or delivery, but things like the literal concept of dating and our shopping preferences. Again, it's not just pre-automobile medieval European cities that have developed effective alternatives. Yes, cars have been integrated more deeply into American culture and city design than they have for Europeans, but change is still possible, as demonstrated by cities that were just as car-centric as America but have since been fixed. Most of the "I need a car to be independent" and "stop trying to take away the freedom that cars give me" attitudes that make so many people vehemently opposed to the idea of moving away from them are a consequence of completely reversible zoning laws that prohibit low-rise multi-family residential buildings and the mixed commercial/residential developments that are needed for healthy, walkable neighbourhoods. It's completely expected that people feel like they can't be independent without a car when the nearest grocery store is four miles away and you have to cross eight lanes of commuter traffic to get there, with no sidewalks anywhere on the route. Have a grocery store within a quarter mile of sidewalks, and suddenly that stops being a problem. Fixing America's (and Canada's) dependence on cars is absolutely possible. Nothing about the country presents an insurmountable barrier to doing so. The only thing that's lacking is the political will, both in the form of voters that don't realize just how possible a better system is and in politicians that are too afraid to rustle the feathers of those ignorant voters and the lobbyists that are quite happy to have a hundred million unnecessary cars that spend the vast majority of their lives idling or parked. No, changing the fundamental culture of the entire country isn't something that can happen overnight, but that's no reason to give up entirely. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	2nd Amendment
adjl 08/26/22 3:13:04 PM #25	Nichtcrawler-X posted... The idea is that only the license holder has the code to the safe. The police do routine check ups here and if someone else opens the safe for them during the check up, the license is revoked. That's not a particularly robust way to assess it because anyone else can simply tell the police "I don't know the code" even if they do know it. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	2nd Amendment
adjl 08/26/22 3:10:54 PM #24	ParanoidObsessive posted... It's easier to push mass transit solutions over individual car ownership in smaller European nations than it is in a nation with massive sprawling landscapes and spread out populations. As much as this is an easy excuse to fall back on, many of the European cities with functional transit and active transport infrastructure have very comparable population densities to many North American cities. Similarly, as much as people like falling back on "it's easy to engineer cars out of cities that were built before cars were a thing," there are pictures of many Dutch cities from as recently as the 70's that are almost indistinguishable from modern American cities in how thoroughly car infrastructure dominates the landscape, but a serious, concerted effort to fix that has brought those same cities to the point of being globally recognized paragons of transportation infrastructure. There are challenges, certainly, and the same solutions can't necessarily be copy+pasted with no adjustments to account for those idiosyncrasies, but the main challenges preventing American infratsructure from being fixed have nothing to do with the landscape or broader issues of population density. They've got everything to do with zoning laws that make it outright illegal to build anything other than single-family homes or high-rises, and a population that's bought into the oil industry's propaganda so thoroughly that they can't comprehend a world where not having their city designed to enable them to drive from door to door doesn't destroy their freedom and independence. Toss in oil/car lobbyists actively preventing investment in alternatives (both locally and on a more national scale, like rail) and the unfortunate reality that political terms are too short to yield tangible results from any major investment (meaning that investment will either be thrown out if a rival takes power or that rival will take credit when results do show up), and you've got a recipe for "maybe this 9th lane will improve traffic more than the 8th did." --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	2nd Amendment
adjl 08/26/22 2:48:55 PM #18	Nichtcrawler-X posted... Separate gun and ammo safes and if anyone can open them but you, the license is revoked. That's the general principle that I think should be followed, with an exception for guns that are currently in use so that carrying is actually possible, but there does need to be a certain degree of leniency to recognize that no storage options are ever going to be perfectly secure. There are varying degrees of security, certainly, so using a "gun safe" made of millimeter-thick plastic that can be pried open with a fork shouldn't be allowed, but whatever standards are established have to recognize that it's simply not realistic to expect consumer-grade products to keep out every determined, competent thief. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	20 meme
adjl 08/26/22 12:27:12 PM #191	Entity13 posted... Talk about taking a turn for the better. Imagine trying to go to Britain when you could just stay in France? --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Are any of those adult steam games even good?
adjl 08/26/22 12:26:17 PM #7	hypnox posted... Way back to the adult games on newgrounds always left me wondering why even bother. I mean if you wanna see naked people, there's already an ocean of actual porn There's something to be said for the interactive element, as well as the rare occasion that there's a half-decent story underpinning the bonulation, but they do indeed tend to fall somewhat short compared to actual porn. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	2nd Amendment
adjl 08/26/22 11:52:54 AM #10	ReturnOfFa posted... Even Switzerland has more strict gun laws, contrary to lazy attempts at comparison by the US right. "But everyone has a gun there!" Which they are permitted to have only after undergoing extensive training with it, and it's subject to very strict storage and usage regulations to minimize the risk of misuse. Almost... exactly like people are calling for in the US? What a crazy random happenstance. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	2nd Amendment
adjl 08/26/22 10:39:09 AM #3	Except that most of the people that have armed themselves to take advantage of the second amendment are the same people voting in the most totalitarian governments because they like the idea of a fascist theocracy. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	What are you doing Facebook? :/
adjl 08/26/22 10:14:59 AM #8	ParanoidObsessive posted... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique Yep. Hence the "for now." I fully expect something similar to show up again in the not-too-distant future because the ideas of nudging fence-sitters into making purchases and beating out competitors by making the sale before the customer even realizes they want to buy something are too lucrative not to chase. Revelation34 posted... The only way this would work is if Amazon also pays the return shipping fees. Or just give the items away for free. The intent was that they'd pay for returns as needed, but they'd still ultimately be expected to make a significant amount of money from the successful predictions and -perhaps more significant - from the large number of predictions that weren't successful but which the unwilling customer didn't feel motivated enough to return for whatever reason (most likely time, but also possibly guilt over causing it to be thrown out, plus you know Amazon will make it as difficult as they can get away with to request a return). Personally, I can say that if anything of the sort goes live, I'll be stripping all payment information from my Amazon account and only ever using gift cards and the like to make purchases moving forward (not that I make many Amazon purchases) to prevent such shenanigans, but many will not be so vehemently opposed and Amazon will still make a ton of money off of the idea. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	lol even a former nixon white house counsel advisor says the release of the trum
adjl 08/26/22 9:20:32 AM #3	It would have been a terrible idea in Nixon's time, but we live in a post-truth world now. Incontrovertible empirical evidence that Trump did a no-no isn't actually going to hurt his reputation among his followers because all he has to do is deny it and they'll accept that as gospel no matter how strong the evidence is. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	What are you doing Facebook? :/
adjl 08/26/22 9:18:03 AM #5	ParanoidObsessive posted... Next step is when services use all that data to manipulate the f*** out of you. We're already well on our way via targeted advertising and media recommendations, but the end-goal is one where AIs can predict your behavior and preferences better than you can and then will narrow-cast ads directly to you in ways you don't even realize you're being advertised to. Fortunately, Amazon's plan to ship people things it predicted they would want before they ordered them got enough backlash that they seem to have stepped back from the idea for now. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Public drinking fountains > bottled water
adjl 08/26/22 9:15:44 AM #22	A properly maintained drinking fountain is likely to be more sanitary than a properly maintained reusable water bottle, but a public drinking fountain is quite a bit less likely to be properly maintained than your personal water bottle is (provided you wash your bottle appropriately). Even if the raw counts of bacteria et al are lower on the fountain, you're also generally going to get a larger variety of pathogens because a bunch of different people are using it instead of just you, which creates a greater risk of being infected by something (particularly relevant in the wonderful world of Covid). --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Microchip in your brain gives lifetime of free pizza, BUT you get diarrhea
adjl 08/26/22 8:08:15 AM #20	That's fair. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Microchip in your brain gives lifetime of free pizza, BUT you get diarrhea
adjl 08/26/22 8:04:45 AM #18	ZangsBeard posted... So... get a job as a delivery driver? Can I just have the diarrhea instead? I mean, working as a delivery driver and getting paid the full price of the food isn't a bad gig. It's still working as a delivery driver, but you could make some pretty substantial money that way. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	What are you doing Facebook? :/
adjl 08/26/22 7:51:01 AM #2	They've done that for a while. Even if you don't have an account, pretty much any site with a link to Facebook will send your site usage stats to Facebook for them to compile and use in case you ever do create an account, as well as selling that data to other corporations as they can. This is just when more reminder that when it comes to social media, you are the product. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	You shouldn't work somewhere where you're paid for how you look.
adjl 08/25/22 1:47:08 PM #18	OhhhJa posted... But it's still a thing. That's the point. You're basically just arguing against human culture. It is what it is until it isn't. There are enough people out there that want you to be well dressed to handle business that is important to them that it isn't unreasonable for employers to require it for certain positions That doesn't, however, justify complaining about how "standards are being lowered," nor does it mean it's wrong to criticize the current standards for being unnecessarily restrictive and push for cultural shifts in favour of greater permissiveness. Basically, there's a purpose in businesses following those arbitrary standards, since that's capitalizing on the culture that has established them. There's no purpose in the standards themselves, though, so eroding them to limit the number of people that are excluded from jobs for not being able to afford the right suit is a good thing. Now, on the flip side, there is a need to establish standard by which to assess how seriously somebody takes their job without actually having to take a chance on them. As much as a lot of "professional dress" standards are rooted in simple classism, the desire for a low-effort method for assessing that also plays a major role in perpetuating the standards. That said, "he's wearing a suit" doesn't actually fill that need, for reasons I doubt I have to explain, so it's reasonable (even important) to call it out for being silly and push people to come up with ways to assess the professionals they contract more sensibly. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	You shouldn't work somewhere where you're paid for how you look.
adjl 08/25/22 12:04:07 PM #16	OhhhJa posted... There are a lot of jobs where looking professional and wearing a suit shows customers that you're taking your job seriously. Not remotely. There are a lot of jobs where looking "professional" and wearing a suit means you're willing to conform to arbitrary cultural concepts of "professionalism" for the sake of appeasing people that assume that not conforming to those arbitrary standards means somebody doesn't take the job seriously, but it doesn't indicate anything about your actual willingness to take the job seriously. OhhhJa posted... A lot of people don't want someone to handle... for example... their will or your divorce case while wearing cargo shorts Which is not "this is a thing because there's an actual purpose behind it," it's "this is a thing because a lot of people want to think it's a thing." These are arbitrary standards that serve no purpose. The erosion of those standards is a consequence of more and more people realizing that having your will drawn up by somebody in cargo shorts just means that the person likes cargo shorts and not that they're in any way less qualified to draw up a will. ParanoidObsessive posted... Yeah, but there's an in-between there, where things like "be clean-shaven" and "cut/comb your hair" sort of fall. And those are things that have sort of fallen by the wayside as well. Excepting cases where being clean-shaven or having well-managed hair are operational requirements (such as respirator use or food service), why would those things be considered in-between? Basic hygiene matters for ensuring a clean, healthy environment. Everything past that is just a matter of making up flimsy reasons to gatekeep based on people's appearance. Those standards are being lowered for the same reason they've been lowered from the days when everyone's professional outfits consisted of like 40 different garments and required three servants to put on: Because it's a bunch of wasted time, money, and effort that nobody actually cares about. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	You shouldn't work somewhere where you're paid for how you look.
adjl 08/25/22 9:16:05 AM #8	ParanoidObsessive posted... There was a time where pretty much every job paid you for how you look, because they expected you to not look like a dirtbag or you'd get fired. Standards keep getting lower and lower though. Which is generally a good thing. "You're not allowed to hold a professional job unless you can afford a suit" has always been ridiculous, elitist gatekeeping that serves no actual purpose. Basic things like "take a shower so you don't leave dirt smudges on everything you touch" are reasonable for the sake of maintaining general tidiness, but arbitrary standards of "professional dress" have never been anything more than arbitrary (and in many cases, outright racist because they only permit "white people looks"). Shifting away from that is pretty exclusively positive unless you work in suit sales (though even then, enough people still buy suits to use for formal occasions that the industry will be fine). --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Rightwing meme time!
adjl 08/25/22 9:10:38 AM #207	captpackrat posted... https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/9/3/AAQwHjAADmax.jpg Missing from this story: They were on their way out. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	I don't want to pay my student loans
adjl 08/25/22 9:07:23 AM #28	Capping repayment based on income is a pretty big deal. That's not necessarily going to help with the "in debt for the rest of my life" thing, and may in fact make it worse to the point that many people will literally take student loans to their graves (especially if banks are allowed to only apply that repayment against the interest and not the principal), but it will do a lot to mitigate the impact loans have on the cost of living. That said, this is very much a bandaid on the wounds that have already been caused by the problem and not a solution to the actual problems. University costs need to be reined in and banks need to be prevented from giving out loans that are larger than people can pay back. As much as people like to scream "you just shouldn't have taken that loan," the reality of the matter is that many of these loans are taken out by 16-17-year-old kids who have spent their entire lives being told that getting a university education is necessary to be successful and that the loan will be worth it (often by people who were able to pay tuition, rent/cost of living, and still buy a house within a couple years of graduating just by working part-time and not needing a loan), so pinning the entirety of the hopes for a "solution" on them making better financial decisions is inevitably doomed to failure. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Anti vaxxers from the 50s
adjl 08/25/22 8:00:08 AM #21	Revelation34 posted... I'm not the one calling a Greek guy a Nazi. What do you believe makes Greek people unable to espouse Nazi beliefs/information? --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Anti vaxxers from the 50s
adjl 08/24/22 6:39:32 AM #19	Yellow posted... https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/unvaccinated-boy-almost-died-tetanus-hospital-bill-was-more-800-n981256 All seemed fine, until six days later when he started crying and experiencing involuntary muscle spasms and clenching his jaw. Soon he was arching his neck and suffering back and muscle contractions throughout his body. When he began to have trouble breathing, his parents called for emergency services Anti-vaxxers are one thing, but watching your child spasm in agony and refusing to take him to the hospital until his life is unmistakably in immediate danger is just sick. I'm sure part of that is the fear of a giant medical bill and the hope that he'd get better without having to spend money, because US medicine is fundamentally broken, but even so. I really should book a tetanus booster. I'm a year overdue for one. Straughan posted... Doctors and virologists are actual superheroes. I can't stand people who shit on them. They're literally saving lives and saving people from agonizing death. People ought to hug them and be on their knees thanking them for the miracles of modern medicine. To be fair, there's no shortage of examples of the medical and pharmaceutical industries doing shady things (Wakefield's study that catalyzed the anti-vaxx movement being one such example, actually, given that the whole thing was fabricated on the dime of lawyers representing a handful of parents who wanted to sue somebody for their kids developing autism), so I can understand some distrust. Combine that with a population that's too scientifically illiterate to reliably assess how credible a new claim is, and you've got people picking and choosing what to trust based on gut reactions and pre-existing biases, which is a perfect recipe for the disaster we're currently living through. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	I'm experiencing some weird shit.
adjl 08/23/22 12:40:28 PM #9	hera posted... take care of your knees people, do not take them for granted Because someday... You just might kneed them. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	You get one servant, what are you choosing?
adjl 08/23/22 12:36:49 PM #23	faramir77 posted... I don't understand how driver is winning, that would be my absolute last choice there and I'd probably still not even want their services unless I went out drinking or something. A lot of people spend quite a bit more time driving in a given week than they spend cooking, cleaning, or taking care of any other routine tasks, and most of that driving is more a matter of having to wade through unpleasant traffic to commute or accomplish some other mundane task than it is anything really enjoyable. It loses a lot of value in that you still have to spend the same amount of time as a passenger as you would driving yourself and being a passenger isn't the same as having actual free time, but for people that really dislike commuting, I can see the appeal. Bonus points if you would normally have to pay for parking, since you'd save that cost. Gardener strikes me as the real absolute last choice there. Unless you're maintaining a large enough property that you can already afford these things for yourself, having enough of a garden to justify employing somebody to take care of it is almost always going to be a matter of cultivating it as a hobby/leisure activity, in which case you'll want to do it yourself. For the basic "I want my property to look nice," you hire a landscaper once, then occasionally water it and get them in again each spring to replant annuals. There's very little benefit to be had from a full-time employee. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	My uncle in law has been arrested for... oof that's not good.
adjl 08/23/22 12:06:05 PM #53	ZangsBeard posted... Apparently he called his grandson and said hes facing 50-80 years in prison. Oof. Given the charges, it wouldn't surprise me if he's exaggerating the situation to emotionally manipulate his grandson into supporting him however possible. You don't commit crimes like this without having some rather unhealthy ideas about how to treat kids. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	HBO Max, keep or can?
adjl 08/23/22 8:20:02 AM #16	Are you currently watching anything on it? Is there anything on it that you want to watch in the next month? If the answer to either of the above questions is yes, keep your subscription for another month. If the answer to both questions is no, cancel. There's a bit more nuance to it than that, obviously, since if you happen to be in the mood to watch something that you can't watch because you cancelled, the barrier of re-subbing is likely to encourage you to do something else instead, but that's the fundamental thought process. Nobody else can tell you whether or not it's going to be worthwhile for you to keep your sub. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Topic	Microchip in your brain gives lifetime of free pizza, BUT you get diarrhea
adjl 08/23/22 8:15:19 AM #7	Straughan posted... Diarrhea isn't a problem if you drink this twice a day. If you get diarrhea while taking Metamucil, you need to go see a gastroenterologist and possibly go to the hospital. Some of you that get diarrhea ought to try it. It's a miracle product. Most of us don't get enough fiber as it is. https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/3/7/AAfGAbAADl6p.jpg Presumably, this magic free pizza diarrhea would magically bypass any efforts to prevent diarrhea. --- This is my signature. It exists to keep people from skipping the last line of my posts.
Board List	Page List: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ... 35