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213374U

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Everything posted by 213374U

  1. I will never understand how cops can even get away with all this in the USA. I just don´t get it. Land of the free...more like police state. It remains to be seen if he'll get away with it. Thing is, you can hear over the radio that somebody calls for police to "stand off" when he lets off a shot — a rather sensible approach. Max Damage here couldn't pass up this chance to score a "Piledriver Bonus".
  2. Woohoo! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHrGmRRMtXc "Jesus Christ, man down!" Actually, you can see him flying upwards.
  3. In BG1, not that I remember. In BG2 some douche shows up and insta-imprisons you if you don't cough up Drizzt's loot, though. That sucked.
  4. Oh, i know that feeling. You can eat, walk and carry, but your mind isn't really there and you end up with that thousand yard-stare. All the senses feel slightly numb and you cannot really think of anything. Yuck. Even stranger is that feeling of being fully awake and active, even energetic and in a fraction of a second you are either walking into a door frame or your head hits your keyboard because your brain "disconnected" without any further notice, trying to force you to sleep Yeah, funny how that works. I found that provided I kept physically active, fatigue didn't seem to be such a big deal. Howeer, sitting down just for a few minutes I was guaranteed to doze off, often without even realizing, only to wake up to a tongue lashing (and "muscle memory" reminders). Anything more complex than tying my boots was completely out of the question as I'd skip steps or make bungle due to shaking hands. Auto-pilot mode only. Fun times. My recipe for eternal life: lift hard, eat well, rest better. So far it's working...
  5. I know that feeling. The only way I can get past that starting indecisiveness is to create a cookie-cutter hero-type (Paladin, usually) and decide that since I'm going to be replaying the game multiple times anyway, might as well explore the obligatory "fight baddies, rescue maidens" path first.
  6. This is the philosophy I live by: I get absolutely as much sleep as I possibly can. And then some more. Natural sleep for me is ~10 hours, regardless of activity, fatigue, stress, etc. I'm at my best with a bit over 7 hours. Better focusing, more energy, better mood. Problem is that I really need to muster all of my willpower to get up, unless I have an appointment, class, work, etc. Back when I was in the army, I'd have to pull all-nighters during exercises, which seriously wrecked me. It wasn't hunger, cold or stress that got me, it was lack of sleep. One of the very few things I'm honestly jealous of is the ability to function on 4-5 hours of sleep daily. If you can do it, I seriously recommend power naps. Big cup of coffee immediately followed by 20 mins of sleep. You'll wake up good as new. For a few hours anyway...
  7. In short, you can't fix stupid. Depressing.
  8. This is a simplistic picture of a phenomenon that is quite complex. In addition, you are working from some assumptions. Chiefly, a) that thieves act rationally, in the sense that that they can accurately judge the optimal risk/reward ratio in the different courses of action available to them, and b) that thieves are pushed to thievery out of choice and not need. We know that (a) is simply not true. Prison inmates are known to have a lower IQ than average (1) (2), which translates into a markedly worse ability to judge the idoneity of a given course of action. This can lead to people making seemingly "dumb" choices that land them in prison. In addition, Dunning-Kruger is a mechanism which may help explain why less intelligent people consistently believe they can get away with crime. Now, the most controversial point is by far b). Please understand that I'm not a crime apologist — I'm simply trying to discuss whether the huge drain on resources that a prison system entails has any effect on crime rates. You might argue that there is always an alternative to stealing. Even if we accept that, that's not the point. Rather, the point is whether people who steal are able to see that alternative. Owing to the intelligence argument, we know that people with lower IQ or developmental disabilities have more trouble negotiating difficult situations. That should be enough to give you an idea of why prisons don't serve to deter the majority of criminals* — they simply don't think they'll end up there! *remember, you are only a criminal if you are caught and convicted. An argument could be made that very few really intelligent criminals are caught. Considering that intelligence is mostly inherited, how fair is that? I'm not a sociologist, but untested suppositions and tradition aren't enough to convince me that crime rates are affected by their legal consequences more than they are by, say, economic causes. So, you are saying that statist oppression is a necessary evil to defend against... foreign statist oppresion. This is the line of thinking that almost plunged the world into nuclear war in the 60's and 80's, and the line of thinking that has enabled tyrannies to take hold since, well, forever. I can turn this argument around and suggest that unified resistance may encourage the enemy to use even more force to achieve its aims than it would otherwise, as exemplified by the US nuking Japan into submission, for instance. The truth is you can resist a foreign oppressor exactly the same way you resist a native one: as passively or actively as circumstances allow. There is functionally no difference because oppression is oppression is oppression, and once made a second-class citizen the causes and means by which this is accomplished matter little. Going to die in a war to resist foreign invasion because that's preferable to dying at home being accused of treason and shot is a proposition I find difficult to defend, but, eh.
  9. I remember that time, and I also remember the "abuse" (I was one of the abusers myself). It was all in good fun and no unicorns were harmed by it. Back then the forum software didn't add the "edited by <name>, <date>" notice automatically which is more than anything else what enabled the shenanigans; the edit notices would have made any foul play evident. Now we have both measures in place and it seems... excessive. Having mods involved in editing old posts by request of the author is clunky and inefficient. I'm with OP here.
  10. That **** looks seriously unhealthy. Ew. edit: I don't mean to insult your sausage, evidently. Ahem. Also, I thought this was a sausage-only thread. I came here specifically to have my sensibilities shielded from the flabbiness of those slabs of meat. So... so sausage-less.
  11. I'm actually not a fan of botifarra myself — a bit too bland for my tastes. I much prefer morcilla (blood sausage). The most widespread recipe (morcilla de Burgos) is made with rice, and is great as an appetizer or in sandwich. Though as the "meat" of the dish accompanying lentils, beans or chickpeas, it's better to use the variety made without rice (morcilla de Asturias). Morcilla de Burgos: Typical Fabada Asturiana with morcilla, chorizo and tocino (bacon), also some ham: You know what they say, "once you go black, you never go back"...
  12. After Alien Isolation, I remembered I had Colonial Marines in the backlog. After reading everywhere how terrible the game is I went and installed some graphics and gameplay mods (SweetFX and the Survival Experience v2) without bothering with vanilla. Not bad for 4.50€.
  13. A government is useless for mutual protection. Neither the police nor the laws they supposedly enforce can effectively prevent you from being robbed, raped or killed, as evidenced by statistics of crime. Sure, they may find the perp later and throw him in jail for a while, but that's not protection, it's revenge. Further, imprisoning people isn't an effective deterrent and in fact the whole prison system is known to be a factory of hardened criminals (read up on recidivism and sentence length) and a source of social stigma that is difficult to remove. This in turn makes it harder for past criminals to re-integrate well in "normal" society. And that's without even going into actual occurrences of state-sponsored robberies, rapes and killings. Literally the only thing that can prevent other people from doing bad things to you (i.e. protect you) is people not wanting to do bad things to you. Maybe stop being so afraid and just thank your neighbors for not being stone-cold killers. ...wow. That sentence there gave me the willies. Unified for what? Unified under what criteria? And make people conform to it under threat of violence? Sounds a lot like fascism. Look, I understand that you take great pride in and identify with the accomplishments of people randomly born at an arbitrary distance from you who happen to speak the same language or not. I respect your right to join with whomever and do things you deem great but about which I don't give a toss. Just let me ****ing opt-out, and don't threaten me with imprisonment or death if I don't want to participate, ok?
  14. 213374U

    Hey Oby!

    ^ Nice try. Be a bit less obvious, you may fool someone yet.
  15. The Typhoon was retarded. I hope they come up with a reason why they don't make reloads for it anymore, or perhaps Jensen had it replaced with something less idiotic like an integrated confetti dispenser. The problem with XP is that it's hard to make all playstyles equally viable, while at the same time having XP rewards that are in the least reactive and dynamic. Do you hand out a bonus for not killing anyone? Then I'm being discouraged from playing the game as a straight shooter and using my more offense-oriented augs. Do you hand out a bonus for convincing some random NPC instead of just punching their lights out? Then I'm being punished for being a jerk legend (which is a shame). Etc. Personally I'm fine with giving a fixed XP amount upon reaching a checkpoint and having gameplay and choice exploration be its own reward, but I know that's not everyone's cup of tea.
  16. 213374U

    Hey Oby!

    As far as I'm aware, it was a German colony up until the end of WWI. It was Germans that first started favoring Tutsis. Belgians took over and expanded on it when Germany lost her colonies after their defeat in the war.
  17. Funny thing is, Volo posted a similarly inflammatory thread just a few days ago. It barely made it to page 2 and it's already fallen from the front page. I guess Vol forgot to add "if you aren't a white heterosexual male, you don't have a right to comment" to make it sufficiently irresistible flamebait? My guess is the casing. [snip] Oh, come on! I'm as anti-processed food as it gets, but this is ridiculous. Traditional recipe blood sausage not only tastes awesome, it also is completely different from packaged, industrially produced sausage. **** that.
  18. Well about ****ing time. I guess this and the hints at a "franchise" (um, isn't DX a franchise already?) is what they have been working on under the "Deus Ex Universe" name. I really liked DX:HR having different endings. Them trying to create an amalgam of all three options for continuity purposes sounds bad and the last time they tried it, it sucked major ass. Also I'm hoping they improve on HtH mechanics. Takedowns were so broken it's not even funny.
  19. The forum is richer for those, man. That and I lost my Alpha Protocol CD. That's... not the kind of wealth I'd like to accumulate, personally.
  20. 213374U

    Hey Oby!

    I'm guessing he means the phrenology-based approach to ethnic division enforcement carried out by the Belgians after WWI. Handing out Hutu/Tutsi ID cards based on such scientific criteria as the relationship between cranial measurement and intelligence, height, and skin coloring; heavily favoring a Tutsi-dominated power structure (they were apparently "more Caucasian" than Hutus and hence, superior).
  21. At least on the BSN you need to have registered games to post... that at least somewhat limits the troll accounts and sockpuppetry.
  22. Classes, in the sense of privileged groups, arise as a result of two principles: accumulation of wealth (be it land or capital) and force. It has absolutely nothing to do with one's profession being more or less useful, as throughout history, the "profession" of landowner has consistently accumulated the most privileges and power, while at the same time being, arguably, the most useless to the community. Nowadays landowners have lost clout relative to "financiers" and other equally useless "professions", while those who do the heavy lifting in the world, i.e. teachers, doctors, engineers etc. just get by. The society we have today is the result of using those two principles as the cornerstone of human interactions.
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