Eumaios

Fake news Well... Ben might be joking, but I would say that Germany, being a representative democracy with more public oversight into the accumulation of statistics, is more reliable than China in terms of things like suicide rates. It's like the article you posted said, it's tough to compare suicide rates when you can't trust all of the information, sometimes due to deceit, sometimes due to bad design, and even other times on account simple lack of reporting or care.

Libertarians see a huge chunk of Asia as their business? Seems more like they just didn't bother to put Asia on their map. <.<

To you, Fiach: The world is as it is. Some people want to strip the British empire of any good by diminishing every accomplishment and magnifying every sin. To be clear, there were sins aplenty in the British empire. What empire has ever existed with an unblemished record? An even better question is, what nation existed with an unblemished record? There's plenty to commend the British, but I won't blindly praise them. It nevertheless strikes me that some people will blindly scorn them. Look, this will probably be a useless post to make, regardless of the fact that I believe it to be true. Nonetheless, I will make it. Then I will stop posting regarding the British empire. We live in a world where the powerful have held sway, but at some point our collective conscience began to demand more than ever could have been expected previously and that conscience worked retroactively. Not that the ancients were bereft of conscience or that there weren't detractors in the Roman (or any other) empire. I likely have more insight about ancient attitudes than many of the people here, but that's beside the point. During that time, even as people became more conscientious than their predecessors, when some people saw the injustice of the strong having power over the weak, there was a certain inertia that prevented real change. The eventual change we see in the world today. The idea that everyone should have a say in his or her own affairs and that there was worth in aboriginal peoples who may have been overcome, overpowered, or even enslaved by their neighbors didn't appear whole cloth by enlightened people in the twentieth and twenty-first century. It was a gradual occurrence brought on by people of good will. Sadly, this well meaning ideal transcended from something wholesome and good into a sort of useless navel gazing that has been the basis of more 'enlightened' people patting themselves on the back because they had the leisure to relax and despise the world as it is, usually a kinder gentler world than any of their ancestors would ever have considered possible. This world , like the attitudes it has fostered, grew over time and those attitudes reflect a certain advancement. If it's counterfactual to suggest that any other empire of such breadth and width would have been equally brutal in its birth, it is also counterfactual to suggest that any other empire of such breadth and width would not have been equally brutal. All such history is clever and entertaining, but it is not real. We have one history. For good or for ill, we live in the world with a set past that has already occurred. Now, for my part, I don't believe time exists, at least not in the way people express it. It's a peculiar thought in my head that time is simply a function of change and that our construct of time is simply a way of breaking things into categories. Perhaps that idea is too clever by half. Perhaps it's simply dumb. However, time does serve one purpose, and that is to express one flow of change that cannot occur in any other direction. The past, as they say, is the past. There is no history in which the British empire didn't exist. It happened the way it happened and nothing can change that. Would we have all the good things we have without the British empire? We can never know. Would we have been bereft of some of the things that we enjoy and take for granted? Likewise. So, repudiate those things that were bad about the British empire. Sure. However, there were a lot of people in the fray, and pretty much all of them had the same motivations on a larger or smaller scale. So, at some point, leave the righteous indignation in the past and think about the future. ...And if you think the way to a peaceful and more enlightened future is to keep dredging up past sins and accusations, I'll contend you're wrong. Human beings have been citing centuries old slights for thousands of years as the basis for making the world a worse place. I'd say our time is better spent looking at the past critically, but not in judgment. Having written all that, I will read any response, each and every word, but I won't reply to this specific subject. ...Not because I can't see arguments coming to which I could respond, but at some point it becomes necessary to put out what you have to say and let someone get the last word. Mostly because I lack time, but also out of fair play. Someone will get the last word. Since I've used so many now, I might as well give that honor to you.

I don't think the dice are rigged. Seriously, I wish I could see how many hours I've put into the app. Hmm, maybe I can. No. in Steam alone, which I only started using well after the tablet app released, I've got 94 hours. I wouldn't be surprised if I had over a 1000 hours on the app. Sure, there's a spread, but that's what probability is. It goes from 0 to 1. Anything between is fair game. There are bugs. There are irritating glitches. There's even a few design decisions with which I disagree. I don't see the dice being rigged. I could be wrong I suppose, but I can't help but believe that the design team is using industry standards to test the RNG.

I won't put words in injurai's mouth, but from my own perspective it's just as important for the United States to maintain the lines of communication as to protect any other vital national interest. It's harder to do that if you're isolationist, but I'm not sure all libertarians are that extreme. In light of that idea, I should extend to Guard Dog the same courtesy of letting him speak for himself.

I take it that you're a libertarian, Guard Dog. Most of the libertarians I know are disgruntled Republicans who grew tired of various aspects of the Republican party. I sympathize with the libertarian ideals, but I've come to view them in the same way I view communism. Sure, one worships equality while the other venerates freedom, but neither are workable. If men were perfect, we wouldn't need communism or liberarianism. Communism and libertarianism rely on the perfection of men. It's kind of backwards, though. Communism relies on men forgoing the primary benefit of their own efforts in order to maintain a balanced society. Libertarianism relies on lesser men not being jealous of their more able (or affluent or simply luckier) neighbors. As individuals, some men might be able to put aside their baser instincts for the purpose of creating a perfect society, but humanity as a whole cannot rely on people acting contrary to human nature. Society can tame human nature in the bulk for a time, but it's like keeping a tiger in a cage. The tiger might appear docile in its cage, but it always look out at you and sees dinner. I think I read that on the bathroom stall at the local tavern. 'Course the same stall suggested nuking 'em all until they glow. How's that for non-intervention?

We *did* vote for this in California, but I'm not sure it's really the answer. Someone will always win and making a commission just so someone else can pack it full of clandestine partisans seems iffy too. I mean, at least when the Republicans or Democrats screw you over with redistricting, you know who did it. On the other hand, while I'm not as confident about commissions and the court, I don't mind the idea of using computer models. That's open to abuse, but I'm not sure it would be as bad. People have been trying to use the courts, commissions, and all manner of other methods to rein in Gerrymandering for years. ...But, I don't want to be the guy who whispers that there's nothing you can do so do nothing at all. Satan has used no more powerful argument than that. Even if it is in vain, we should still try to create better policy. Like redneckdevil said, it's gotta go.

Yeah, I've read about the redistricting decision also. I think the argument isn't really about racism. If you're a Republican and a certain segment of the population voted a certain way, you'd likewise try to mitigate that deficit. It only matters that Latinos are the primary population subject to the gerrymandering because they're easily distinguishable as an ethnic group. Trust me, if those Latinos voted en masse for Republicans, it would be the Democrats trying to find some way to diminish their electoral impact. It makes for great politics for some Democrats to call Republicans crazy, but I think that tactic has started to become an albatross for the Democrats in most statewide (and certainly presidential) elections. I personally detest gerrymandering, but I don't see how we can get away from it. It makes a mess of things, but both parties have done it and will continue to do so. Granted, I would probably be less sanguine about it if it were republicans who were screwed. Double Granted, I live in California, and I'm still pretty sanguine.

That was pretty funny, although I'm with SonicMage117. I want me some elf lovin'. Not necessarily the scary giraffe necked elves, but... ya know... Arwen or some other elvish hottie. I also agree about the Santa elves. If anything, I find *them* scary. well... any tiny magical being, really. Keebler elves. Leprachauns. pixies. My mother in law.

This. I've had some extra time lately and I'm a little tired of chess and Mordheim at the moment. I wouldn't mind trying DOS (makes me think cd \PoR), but I want a funny game where I can kick ass and name names. I don't mind the battles being hard, but I've grown weary of games that get cutesy with resting and saving.

Yeah, that's social media. Not that I blame them for promoting their own agenda. Hell, I even agree with it most of the time, but I still call it for what it is.

I don't think it hurts to keep in mind the ulterior motives. The video serves as a springboard for debate which Ben Number 3 carries out here. However, In many ways, his position reminds me of the scene from Life of Brian. What have the British ever done for us? I personally believe that the British empire was on the balance a force for good in the world and I've been hoping the population has started to have some pride in itself again. A little bounce in it's step and a move away from the hang-dog mope a dope attitude that it developed over the past couple of decades. "Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting." ​I hope no one points out the French connection of that quote.

I don't begrudge the argument that games shouldn't glorify or normalize obesity. I just don't agree with the idea that it's even remotely an issue. There are competing perspectives here that apparently have become more of a spectrum. I mean, rhetorically everything can be expressed as for or against, but the larger argument has gotten a bit weird and multi-directional to me. Games should not make everyone woman feel as if she needs to be an hourglass hottie, but games also shouldn't promote dangerous lifestyles by normalizing obesity. On the other hand, they probably shouldn't normalize having sex with a hooker and then murdering her to steal your money back and then driving over to an enemy drug lord and cappin' his ass so you can take over his drug trade. If we consider options in computer games as causative for societal norms, we better invest some heavy weaponry when the next Grand Theft Auto hits the shelves. The body image question has always been strange to me, but now it's become surreal. This Hurlshot guy seems to be earnest and sincere in his statements, and I don't mean to disparage him or his statements, but society has a long way to go before the balance of saying that fat people are stupid, lazy, and comical gets turned into obesity being the 'in' thing because people can make an RPG character that carries a few extra pounds. I agree with SonicMage117 that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I don't know if the chicken came first or the egg, but either society has trained our beholding eye to think that pencil thin chicks are never more sexy than when they knock six hefty guys on their asses or our collective eye has trained society to the same end. Frankly, I'd like to have some female character who, while attractive in face and fit in form, doesn't make me laugh by being pathetically thin and beating down large, well-trained men with absolute ease. I've known women I suspected could put the smack on me, but they sure as hell didn't look like every physical part of them had stopped growing at thirteen with the exception of their breasts. Then again, I'm kind of wasting some free time I've had on this message board, so I'm probably not comprehending the all sides of the argument as well as I should.

Hadn't really thought of it that way, Ethics, but it makes sense. ten minutes sounds like a long time, but I guess that's basically because of the quick dice changes. Moving dice in and out of the equation could cause the calculation to take a lot of time. I haven't had a problem with the number generator myself, and I'm a little distrustful of anecdotal evidence that it's got serious problems. Not that it cannot, just that if I force myself to keep track of what's going on, the numbers more or less bear out over the long haul. In my experience, that is. The other thing is, 99% means 1 out of 100. With all the dice rolls, you're bound to hit that 1 out of 100 fairly frequently. However, since we don't have fractions, 99% also means 1 out 1000 or more. So I try to keep track of the difference, although the truth is it's a game and you have to rely on luck sometimes. Now something that happened to me so often I thought there might be a problem a while back was evading and having the same card pop up every time. I even started keeping track of that because it was starting to feel a bit weird. ...But I stopped playing for a while because I was busy and when I started back again it wasn't happening nearly as often, so I figured either they fixed a problem or I was just suffering from confirmation bias or something on my end.

The formula for calculating chances based on dice sides and numbers of dice is straightforward. I can't imagine that a computer programmer would mix it up. However, I think it does fail to take into account things like "all 1s are turned into 3s" and the scenario where 1s, 2s, (and I think 3s) are turned into 0s. It's not even the RNG. Before they implemented the odds calculation thing, I would just see how many dice could come up as 1 before I lost a roll. This stuff is simple statistics, so you could calculate it out pretty quickly for a small number of dice with a regular ol' tiny calculator.

Haha I broke Simply Chess! I feel like I managed to break into Skynet by overflowing the blackjack game! This would have been a stalemate, but apparently the game didn't know how to manage it when both of us had lost everything except one pawn which we both turned into queens. It just gave an error message and stopped altogether. Total comedy.

I didn't understand the question. I sometimes play as a female, in which case I will make an aesthetically appealing character. I make no apologies for my tastes in aesthetics. In fact, since the trend is that our predilections are beyond our control, I don't see how anyone can accuse me of anything for my preference either in terms of the female form or the other attendant attributes such as dark hair, dark eyes, and fair skin. Of course, I don't make cookie cutter characters, so if I make such a character, figuring I'm going to be looking at my character more than anything else during the course of the game, I will often vary things in one attribute or another. Sometimes the female form is slender, sometimes athletic, other times curvy or even a little more sway in the walk away. Other times, especially if I feel more attachment to the character as a better version of my own person, I'll play a male. In that case, I'll worry less about the body but the face will typically be a tanned guy with medium brown hair. I don't know about shaming people. I've always tried to be kind, let alone polite, but I don't think people should be overly sensitive. I say that as someone who used to weigh 400 pounds. Let me tell you, if you're really fat, you always know it, even if people are polite about it.

Have won a handful of games on level 9 (out of 100 ugh!). I have a couple of stalemates in there also, which bites since both stalemates were the result of my foolishly moving into a position where the enemy king couldn't make a move but wasn't in check. I've never much played chess in the past other than goofing around. Going from 8 to 9 was really steep and I swear it seems like sometimes 9 can suddenly get harder for several games. Crazy human thinking to be sure. Anyhow, if I can get to the point where I win over half of the games on level 9 (child's level) then I'll graduate to 10 (still child's level).

That leaves no viable source of news because every news source in the history of ever at some point lied. Then hear them, triangulate, and try to find the truth as best you can. My point is that people should not take news outlets as being beacons of unbiased light. We still have to get info from somewhere. All are neither fair nor balanced. So, like I said, see individual outlets, by and large, the same way you see political parties, think tanks, or advocacy groups. I want to find the pivot point between being foolishly taken in by shills on one hand and refusing to believe anything I hear.

It's juvenile/young adult fiction, but I would like to see Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series. I'd like to see Lovecraft also. Hmmm, Peter Straub's Shadowland, which is billed as horror but more eerie than truly scary. Great novel. Of course, there would be a lot of work to get it into something playable as a game. As an unabashed fan of Starship Troopers, I would be afraid the game would take the cartoonish path of the movie rather than the flawed but thought provoking ideas expressed in the book.

Oh, I wouldn't get rid of the media. First of all, it's a freedom of speech issue. I say let everyone be heard and folks can ignore sources they don't trust. Second of all, to your point, we don't have a choice. It doesn't matter if we say the New York Times is the 'media' or we get our 'eye-witness account' from cousin Ted who happened to hear it from a friend who knew a cop who heard about it on the police channel, we have to rely at some point or another on other people to supplement our knowledge. I guess what it comes down to is that I just advise that people read or watch the source they enjoy, but take the news critically and realize there are alternate views and other sources. The only thing is, if a news source literally lies (as opposed to shades meaning or fails to provide context) then you should probably not use that source for news.

Can't win if you don't play. Well... since winning isn't really my point: I put myself out there, it's only fair that I respond to criticism. Regarding your thoughts, SonicMage117, I actually agree that Trump has been remarkably better on the policy side than I thought he'd be, which was a pretty low bar. However, he keeps saying crazy things. It's hard to have a rational discussion with people who might listen to policy arguments when Trump manages to say things that reinforce so many folks' hatred of him. On the other hand, to your point, there are people who will despise everything he says because they're bat-**** crazy with Trump-hate. I don't know much about the Miss Texas thing, but people 'bravely' hating the current president is so common at events these days, I don't think of it much. The poor bastard in Tiananmen Square... he was brave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man So, as to you, Hurlshot, I would still define media through common use as more or less larger print institutions (Washington Post, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal), the nightly news broadcasts (NBC, ABC, CBS), and 24 hour cable news (CNN, Fox, MSNBC). However, even if we agree on broader or narrower terms, I don't think it really matters. Yes, there are counter examples, sometimes significant ones, to the proposal that the media (broad or narrow) is mostly hostile to the current administration. Sure. The left is adept at creating whole cloth arguments from the scraps of counter examples. *shrug* I still believe my larger points stands and perhaps is made worse by what is the inevitable factionalism (or tribalism as has become a trendy word) of the media. People can pretend that media outlets, whether we cite facebook or NBC nightly news, are beacons of unbiased reporting. That won't make it true. On the other hand, I'm shadow-boxing here. I can only reasonably infer so much from your reply. As for the honorable former president Clinton, just because we can dance around the definitions don't mean the underlying ideas aren't real and serve as the basis for discussion. ...And, assuming I'm an ignorant flat earther who perceives the media in a certain unfair light, you're still left with someone who believes that the media needs to be knocked off its perch and be forced to battle it out in the fray like think-tanks, advocacy groups, and political parties. My particular view, even if it's vexxing or just plain wrong, has some cache with a large segment of the public. That we can cite clearly more conservatively biased news outlets such as Fox news or even unabashedly conservative populist organizations such as Breitbart only reinforces my salient point that the media has become a political force with its own peculiar causes and goals.

I haven't participated in an online political discussion in a long time, although I read them from time to time. I've been a closet masochist since a misguided youth, I'm afraid. I don't want to write a wall of text, and most of my comments may be taken as support for previous comments I've seen already. 1. We must bring down the media. No, that's not a knee jerk reaction. I'm convinced that unbiased journalism was always a pie in the sky theory. It's like communism or the perfect monarchy. Proponents argue that it's doable but it just hasn't been done yet. Yet. The fantasy was at least tolerable when there was the pretense of unbiased behavior. That illusion (and even in the good days it was illusory) is now gone. Better to have new outlets making their biases apparent in order to know the slant of their coverage. 2. For years, the media was in the hip pocket of the Democrats. I know people argue against that fact. Some of them are even foolish enough to believe themselves. Now, however, the bulk of the media isn't in the pocket of the Democratic party. It's become a monster in its own right, rampaging for its peculiar goals and causes. This has not elevated the fortunes of the Democrats. Yes, the media has managed to keep all of the many faceted flaws of the current president in the public's face, but when we're acclimated to hatred on all sides towards all sides, it won't matter that President Trump is reviled by the public. Everyone else will be reviled too. Even the usual truism that it doesn't matter who else is hated because the figure that matters is the president no longer holds true to the same degree and increasingly less as the trend continues. The Trump presidency is probably the most significant of our lifetimes, but not for the reason some people believe. People act like he's the disease, but he's just the latest symptom of a sickness that will continue to get worse if we don't accept treatment. There will be no spoonful of sugar for the medicine we require. 3. The Democrats might be able to ride Trump-hate to victory in 2018. After all, a mid-term for an abysmal administration loathed by people across the political spectrum? Life for the Democrats should be good. However, the Democrats are carrying around an increasingly despised media, dragging behind themselves truly dismaying groups of anarchists, and begging for financial backing from tightening pockets. They've got problems of their own. It's true that more cash doesn't always mean election wins. Just look at the last presidential election, but the Democrats can't count on Trump-hate alone. It'll gin up their enraged and maddened base, but it won't help them with people who are worried about issues, one of which is fear of the Democrats' enraged and maddened base. I won't make predictions about the election because at this point I literally don't think it matters much long term. The short term can change, but unless we have at least some principled people willing to compromise in office, we're in deep trouble in our country.

Learning humility through playing Simply Chess. First 8 levels were easy. 9 has kicked my ass, but I'm getting to where I can actually beat it. When I can do so conistently, then I'll graduate myself through the next 91 levels. In theory. Never had much desire to play chess younger and now I fear my mental acumen is diminished. Still fun.

I bought Sunless Skies on early access. Much brighter than Sunless Sea, but the bare bones appear to be largely the same. Always tough for a company to make a sequel that adds something good without changing something else that works. I have high hopes for it, but I'll probably shelve it until full release.