Bartimaeus

A while back, I wrote this post: They ended up murdering some of their family instead. I guess that takes care of that. ...At least it wasn't me?

That's less specific than I was expecting, so I'm glad I asked. Was expecting something to do with specific communities (e.g. if you're a computer user and a hacker does something bad, as you mentioned earlier, obviously you should feel shame...and yet this explanation would still give no concrete rationale for doing so). I don't think shame is as effective of a motivator as you might think, especially because when overused, it loses meaning and stops even registering for a great deal of people. Speaking extremely generally here, people with a strong sense of empathy are usually very keenly aware of the literally endless tragedies and crises of the day, and seem to tend to eventually become overwhelmed and consequently numb to them, or at best stick to a very select number of issues that they feel they can make a difference on while trying to manage their own life affairs. For people without much empathy, those feelings seem to generally turn back to the self - i.e. it's about them and how they can get over their sense of shame. They might be motivated to do something good out of it, but it's predicated upon what they currently feel and ultimately fleeting. I am much more interested in ways of encouraging growth in empathy that doesn't involve constant negative reinforcement, personally, especially given my background in coming from a family rife with depression and mental illness, and where multiple people have literally killed themselves as a result of guilt complexes over things they didn't feel like they could solve.

You didn't answer the question. What is the rationale for feeling shame in these situations? Why should I feel shame when a hacker does something bad when I myself had nothing to do with it? I think I have an idea of what your explanation is, but I'd rather actually hear it rather than make assumptions (especially since I think I emphatically disagree with it...but would rather not launch into a counterargument without actually being clear first).

I probably would, too. Don't like the player, he's really only been a "good", not great RB in terms of skill (but he's been crazy reliable when on the field, which is an understated "skill" for a RB), keeps doing stupid stuff that gets him looked at by the league office, and RBs just tend to not be worth the cash in general.

I wouldn't say "no leverage". So much of that offense runs through him (and IIRC, Dak had the worst stretch of his career when he was out, right?), and he's on the last year of his 4 year rookie contract which pays him relatively little to what he'll make on the 5th year option next year ($9 million) or the franchise tag the next (somewhere in the ballpark of $13 million). This is also the last year the Cowboys don't have to pay Dak Prescott, which means the Cowboys are going to start having money problems after this season and may hemorrhage talent just like every other team that has to pay out the big bucks to their quarterbacks (and though Dak Prescott is not worth $30 million a year, the reality of the modern game is you need a franchise QB, and he qualifies...even if not by leaps and bounds, as one). So if there's a year that he can force the Cowboys' hand, it's the last year where they're "all-in" on winning (Rams last year style) and when their roster is arguably going to be at its best for the next however so many years. Only have to look at the Packers and how much talent we've lost over the years as a result of difficult monetary decisions on who to keep and who to cut to see how difficult it can be to get back on top once you've started paying a core group of stars. Of course, it also doesn't help when you let a few of the wrong guys go - Casey Hayward and Micah Hyde... - while also paying a couple of the wrong guys...Nick Perry and sort of Randall Cobb. He can't be out the entire year, unlike Le'Veon Bell, but he might be out long enough and be in bad enough shape that there's not much of a difference. It's probably the Le'Veon Bell situation that he's attempting to pre-empt, actually - a reliable workhorse RB tends to have a very short lifespan in the NFL, and outlasting your 4 year + 1st round 5th year option rookie contract just to get franchise tagged twice in a row (especially as a RB, which has by far the absolute worst usage/performance-to-price franchise tag money) and then discarded is a pretty crappy way to get treated as a star player. If the team has a multi-year investment in a player, they have ample reason not to horribly overuse and abuse him, which in turn makes it more likely he lasts in the league long enough for a second contract, all of which gets him lasting money and security.

No major injuries yet. Not sure what to expect this season from the Packers this season, given a new coaching staff and so many young players. I think we'll be a better team than last year, but it might not necessarily be reflected in the wins (where we honestly should've been more like 4-12 but were very lucky to escape with a number of last-second wins that felt borderline unndeserved if not for the heroics of a few players). If we somehow make it to the playoffs in any form, I'd be pretty darned impressed, but I'm setting my expectations at around the 6-10-to 9-7 area, with the caveat that we hopefully don't look incompetent for half of the season before the team realizes they'll really need to pull some magic out of their butts now, which has seemingly happened every season since 2014 to varying degrees of success.

Either it's something to do with alcohol (is Romania particularly known for its alcoholics?) or the Sultanate of Rum (more or less the precursor state to the Ottoman Empire), I'd guess. But yeah, I don't get it either.

I mean, the Democrats have attempted to pass election security bills specifically for fighting against the Russians, but McConnell has prevented them from being voted on. Not much more they can do about it.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/22/jeffrey-epsteins-black-book-trump-clintons-prince-andrew.html "The "black book" of Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy financier and now-accused child sex trafficker, is a smorgasbord of high-profile, powerful people, including Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, Britain's Prince Andrew and former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and convicted sex assailant and comedian Bill Cosby, Epstein's former neighbor. Also in Epstein's address book is supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, Clinton's daughter Chelsea Clinton, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and John Kerry, late Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, and media titan Rupert Murdoch, New York magazine noted in a new article." If all of these people were actually involved (and just to be clear, the fact that they're named in a book of contacts does not prove it in of itself - it's unlikely every kind of relationship Epstein had was for the same purpose, after all), I would literally not regret it for even a moment if they all went to prison. I guess it's too late for Khashoggi and Bill Cosby, but yeah.

What Humanoid said. "Corrupt HDD" could mean anything - depending on the exact problem, different solutions may be (im)possible.

Mike: "Script by J. J. Abrams and Chris Terrio, writer of Batman v. Superman, Dawn of Justice, and the Justice League." Rich: "...Is that a joke?" Mike: "No." Rich: "This movie is going to be awful. [...] None of these people have written anything good."

I am more excited about the RLM video(s) on it than the show itself, and I've even seen all of TNG.

Yeah, that movie is pretty bad. Liked the books when I read them in grade school, but almost nothing about that film worked for me besides the "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" song. Wasn't sure if my tastes had changed, if that type of writing just didn't work as well in movie format, or if it was just straight up bad. That's pretty dope. Yeah, no, I wasn't trying to say the movie was "traditional" by any normal measure...but I thought more so than specifically Stalker, which was so slow, so meandering, so gratuitous with itself in a lot of different ways that it stopped feeling like a movie at a certain point, which I didn't get with Solaris. So far, I personally wouldn't call myself the biggest fan of his stuff (not that much of a surprise, given both my relative newness to having any interest in film as well as being very particular about what I like, I'm sure), but I do appreciate what I've seen so far for delivering a very different kind of experience when I'm in the mood for it. Stalker will probably warrant a re-watch at some point now that I have a better feeling for what his work is like, which I didn't have any clue of when I initially watched it and it wasn't much like anything I'd ever seen before. With Solaris, I did have an idea, and I was prepared for and in the mood for it, so naturally, I liked it a bit better.

Solaris (1972) by Andrei Tarkovsky. I liked it a bit better than Stalker, but it had a lot of similarities. Seemed like a more normal "movie" movie than Stalker, which was nice since Stalker was bordering on "art film" for me. ...Unrelated: Movie poster-making seems like a bit of a lost art these days.

@KaineParker

but it looks so dolphin noises ugly compared to avatar (e): also we have a tv thread wth

Spoilers for people who haven't yet seen it's sake:

What? "Nov 16, 2018 · Rep. Eric Swalwell, California Democrat, warned gun owners Friday that any fight over firearms would be "a short one," because the federal government has an extensive cache of nuclear weapons." Good lord. I read now that he recently claims that it was a joke, but it sure doesn't read like a joke at the time he said it. If you're going to make a ridiculous pandering statement like that, at least pick something that makes a lick of sense.

Chernobyl was absolutely fantastic, definitely my favorite miniseries of all time (my personal love for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and all things Chernobyl-related surely didn't hurt, either). Stranger Things 3 was pretty good, but season 1 is still so far above both seasons 2 and 3 that I just can't appreciate it the same way as I did. Still has really good character writing for the most part, but my brain is starting to turn off (or...maybe on is more accurate, since it starts to wander) during a lot of parts, especially the big action and CGI scenes, and at some point, I think I just stopped believing in Eleven as a character and more as a set-piece, which doesn't help when the show is nominally centered around her. Eh, whatever, still pretty good, I guess, but seriously, go watch Chernobyl.

I was expecting and desired a rickroll. Hmph.

Trump thinks we had airports in 1775, gets Revolutionary War details confused with War of 1812? It was supposedly a scripted speech, how did no-one catch at least the airport one? ...Trump's constant stream of gaffes might make him a pretty funny guy if he both had zero power and didn't also happen to be a revolting human being...but then we probably wouldn't care if that were the case.

Some absolute nutjob in an IRC channel I was on started messaging me out of the blue a few weeks back. Kept messaging me over and over, pestering me about who I was going to vote for, and who I favored in the Democratic race. Literally messaged me for about an hour about how wonderful Kirsten Gillibrand seemed, and wanted to know my thoughts on whether or not I thought she had a chance of being the Democratic candidate. I had never even heard her speak before. Ended up saying I had to go and making a new username just to get him to stop bothering me. I guess I could've blocked him, too, but it's generally better to stay polite with the nutjobs, I think. Anyways, I finally got to hear her talk tonight and I think I hate her. Not sure if the nutjob biased me against her or if she really was that dreadful tonight (holy cow, the amount of interruption from this lady). Either way, I'd like to award a big "screw you" to that IRC nutjob now - you wasted an hour of my time about a candidate that was polling at like sub-1% at that time, and is probably going to go below even that after this. Think I liked Harris the best out of everyone (whom I knew nothing about beforehand). Was not terribly impressed by Bernie for most of it, which was disappointing - too much of the ol' stump speech (which effectively served as deflection), not enough in-context/situational answers. Will be nice to see a more controlled debate forum than the clownshow that this was with so many candidates that have virtually 0% chance of doing anything, and where they're hopefully not all trying to shout over each other for speaking time.

It essentially means that the quarantined subreddit (and anything that's posted in it) will never appear to anyone not specifically subscribed to it, including non-registered users. Only accounts with verified emails are allowed to subscribe to it as well. It also disables their ability to have their custom formatting and styles IIRC, which means their subreddit will appear simply as the vanilla subreddit (i.e. no giant banners of Trump or such).

But it probably provides a better overview of their thoughts on the movie (yes, they hated it, but it's not "the worst thing ever", and the fact that a bunch of internet nerds got up in such a furor over it just provided it more notoriety than it really deserved - if people want to enjoy some bad gender-swapped reboot of a beloved comedy, it's probably better to just let them and not make a big deal out of it...and this principle probably applies to almost anything). Also, sadly, not everyone is as interested in video essays as some of us.

It also would've probably made more sense to link the real RLM review instead of the Plinkett Review that switches between good points and hyperbole and mocking all the people who were getting comically outraged by what's just yet another bad remake and calling it "the worst thing ever" at the time.