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Bartimaeus

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Everything posted by Bartimaeus

  1. Though it would be amusing to see the U.S. kicked out of the G7, I think the others will collectively weather the storm for the time being. (e): Although based on his recent temper tantrums, it's probably much more likely Trump will decide to simply withdraw from the G7.
  2. I have a strict "separate but equal" policy for my strawberries and jalapenos, .
  3. It's a Japanese animation company very renowned for its writing. Well, their animation, too, but if their writing was bad, nobody would care as much. Yeah, technically, the three I haven't seen are My Neighbor the Yamadas, Tales from Earthsea, and The Wind Rises. I don't expect to care for the former two, while yes, I am interested in the latter, but didn't really expect to write or talk about it. Maybe it'll prove me wrong, though.
  4. Grave of the Fireflies. What a piece of crap...is sort of what I thought when I watched this the first time many years ago when I was younger and utterly abhorred all anime and anything anime-esque. And also it was when I was kind of forced into watching it because of and with somebody else, and in Japanese. Now slightly more mature because of age and having already broadened my horizons by enjoying other Ghibli movies, this second time around was very different. Instead of being unable to enjoy myself, I merely wanted to shoot myself in the face. Just kidding, it was very good - completely different experience, was pretty much like I hadn't seen it. I can see why I hated it the first time I saw it, though - for somebody not at all acquainted with the genre, or pretty much anything Japanese outside of Nintendo games...and being stuck watching a little child cry for a not insignificant amount of the screen time...watching it with somebody else...I can see why I didn't like it. Would not recommend to somebody who hasn't seen any other Ghibli movies - try something more fun like Totoro or Kiki's first. I've also been re-watching some of the others. The biggest change in perception has been Whisper of the Heart, which I initially thought was great, but upon watching it again, discovered that I unfortunately really just absolutely loved it, and it easily became my favorite (and a top 3 favorite film period - it really strikes me how this just seems like a film that was made specifically for me, and that's a really special feeling that I don't think I've ever had about any movie before, which ALMOST catapults it to a rating I've never given any movie before, but which I have decided to remain a little more objective about for the time-being). I must've been like half-asleep when I watched it the first time, since it felt like I was seeing it for the first time again. There were some other slight shifts, but this is basically how the ratings turned out: 9.0: Whisper of the Heart ​8.5: My Neighbor Totoro, Howl's Moving Castle ​8.0: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Grave of the Fireflies, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke ​7.5: Pom Poko, Porco Rosso, From Up on Poppy Hill, Only Yesterday ​7.0: Spirited Away, Laputa: Castle in the Sky ​6.5: Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, When Marnie Was There, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya ​ This should be the end of my Ghibli posts, I think. So, finally, I'd like to give a shout-out to this poster of Nausicaa that I kept seeing in a "top 100 movies of all time" list that I initially completely ignored, but began to intrigue me and slowly wore me down enough to give it a shot. You were the real MVP. ​ ​
  5. If you want to be depressed (so this isn't for you, TrueNeutral, ), here's the reddit Suicide Prevention Megathread where you can read thousands of people's stories dealing with suicide (their own attempted and friends and family): https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8pks1u/suicide_prevention_megathread/?sort=confidence
  6. Ooh, I hate it when people do that. Somebody repeatedly asking questions like that (and others such as "what're you doing") within the same day day just feels like code for, "Entertain me!". I usually start giving the worst possible answers - answers that are completely boring, unnecessarily obfuscated, flat-out repeated word-for-word, self-referential, etc. They either will get sick of your answers and will stop asking or improvise something themselves, and in the meanwhile, you have your rote answer. Either way, the problem eventually gets solved. Once in a while, though, you have somebody whom you really just can't shake...and you can unfortunately no longer just be politely passive aggressive about it.
  7. I'd be interested in reading that.
  8. (The last Obsidian game I seriously played was Mask of the Betrayer, although I did at least give PoE a shot.)
  9. My way of dealing with touchy subjects is usually making humorous or pithy observations about them. The number of times I've had people somewhere between faux and real yell at me for making terrible semi-joke-observations about some of my recently dead/suicided family members is probably too many to count. Sorry if that doesn't work for you, .
  10. >it's essentially an admission that they wouldn't have if the book didn't tell them Probably too extreme a way of looking at it. It's probably more from failing to utilize a little empathetic and critical thinking. "I get my morals from the Bible - where do they get theirs?" The easiest way to answer that would be to ask where you would get your morals if you weren't a Christian...which then sort of leads to how you became a Christian to start with. For most people, the answer to the latter is "from being raised that way by my family in my society", and then the answer to the former becomes an obvious and resounding "oh". Though people with the ability to objectively notice patterns in the people they meet and know of (or rather the concrete lack thereof in this case) should eventually observe that there are both garbage and great people from virtually every walk of life, regardless of most any culture, upbringing, or religion. (e): words
  11. Funny isn't the word I'd use, but then me and chronic depression have a very toxic relationship. Didn't know the guy, but every mental illness related suicide is a tragic failure of society. R.I.P. Well, yeah, I didn't mean literally funny. I was speaking a little from experience, after all.
  12. RIP. I was never really comfortable with watching his shows - I always found him just a little off-putting, and he seemed to often have an alcohol problem (e: and from what I'm reading now, he's had substance abuse problems since forever, which unfortunately fits with the feeling I already had). A few people I know that have been following him for forever are going to be devastated, though... Chronic depression is a funny thing, too - most of the time, it might seem bearable, but it only takes one night where you get into your own head just a little too much and there being nobody there to help you or pull you back from the brink, and that can be it.
  13. Except it's not, but that is a whole different can of worms and wouldn't really belong into a political thread anyway. But it's a very human trait, looking for patterns and order where there might be none. We have the Big Bang Theory to explain the present state of our universe on a macro-scale. AFAIK, we do not really have any working theory as to why existence (basic matter and energy) is a thing at all - I've personally always thought the only logical line of thinking is that nothing should exist, since if you keep going back in "time" (i.e. prior states of the universe), at some point, something must've arisen from nothing. Maybe "time" is an illusion, and trying to understand the universe in terms of prior states is a completely wrong way of looking at things...but that apparently seems to be the way we're stuck with. Alternatively, how could matter and energy have always simply existed? Either way I look at it, the entire concept of anything existing is a fuzzy, incomprehensible, and utterly illogical mess for which there seems to be no answer...and I've never heard anything even approaching a working answer to solve it. Maybe you know something I don't, though. So it's not exactly a surprise that some people would prefer to put a little faith into a religion than think about these big money questions that have no answers (while still managing to be pretty existentially frightening by simply being asked). Jesus, for example, is pretty well accepted by historians to have existed - whether or not he did or said 99.99% of the things described in the Bible, or whether he was in any way divine(ly inspired), those are things that we cannot confirm to any degree. Still, just the fact that there's just that tiny little bit of consensus-accredited authenticity (his basic existence and its apparent effect upon the world) along with the fact that he existed only a mere hundred generations ago...and of course, the legitimacy effect of so many still apparently following him (if a billion people followed Scientology instead, it too would automatically have some legitimacy simply by the sheer numbers)...is enough to put a little pragmatic doubt and curiosity into even the most agnostic of minds. Me? I think anything being divine is horridly, dreadfully slim, Jesus included - though I do hope otherwise, although perhaps not in the way many of his followers might envision. But there's no way I'd make that leap of faith into proclaiming that I *know* there is nothing divine (or something like it).
  14. It doesn't look like anything to me.
  15. But that's easy to solve. You just make all your games control like floaty trash to begin with, and it'll be hard to notice the difference.
  16. I cannot imagine any such thing being even near merely 10 years away. I might accept something like 30-40 years as being at least a possibility, but at least for the U.S., the percentage of people that live in urban areas (about 60%, and this is the target audience due to simple physical speed limitations) combined with our way behind infrastructure means that normal gaming PCs and consoles will still be around for a while.
  17. Donald Trump Called Asbestos Poisoning a Mob-Led Conspiracy, Now His EPA Won’t Evaluate Asbestos Already in Homes: http://www.newsweek.com/pruitt-trump-asbestos-chemicals-trump-962703 In his 1997 book, The Art of the Comeback, Trump argued that the association of the chemical with health risks was part of a mob-created conspiracy. “I believe that the movement against asbestos was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal. Great pressure was put on politicians, and as usual, the politicians relented,” he wrote. wot
  18. I thought it was the First Lady missing...now the president, too? It's a circus out there.
  19. That's weird. I only played WoW for like a month like a decade ago (right before I realized that MMOs were ghastly dull and never played one ever again - thank you WoW for being so boring that I never wasted time on another), but for some reason have the same memory of some quest-givers voicing text.
  20. Harvard Business School? The Historic Brass Society? Harry Benjamin's Syndrome? ...The Hogere Burger School? Screw it, I can probably just search online real quick. Oh, Harebrained Schemes. Right, those guys. (e): A classic reference, Sandy.
  21. Did you read the actual report? While perhaps a little overstated at times, I really don't think the unclassified report itself is anything crazy, and certainly does not say anything like "Veteran = Libertarian = Conservative = Gun Owner = Terrorist". The bits on veterans weren't terribly large, and mainly concerned themselves with previous attempts during the 90s to recruit veterans for terrorist activities. If anything, with time, it's (overall) proved a little more true than I would've expected it to have at the time of publishing... (e): My post was directed at Guard Dog.
  22. I thought the original was alright. I personally hate the setting, and I'm not terribly keen on either of the two main characters. And Disney sequels...well, we'll see. (e): On a side-note, I'm not sure what "the Deadpool of kids' movies" actually means. I haven't seen Deadpool and don't know what it's about, though, so that might be why.
  23. Ehh. Hmm. Maybe it'll be alright.
  24. It was a bipartisan decision, and it was made with pretty good reasoning. It is a limited ruling that doesn't set precedent due to issues with this specific case. While this baker wins, the issue has more or less been punted down the road.
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