Gromnir

yes, vol response is very cute, but the guy in question got killed 'cause a couple trigger-happy cops shot him while he were failing to follow some reasonable police instructions. "cry havoc and let slip the dogs o' war!" not. is no Freedom Cry. our victim in question were not blocking a tank in Tienanmen Square. guy got shot for the same reason most people gets shot in this country: multiple people did stupid things. HA! Good Fun! ps as First Amendment attorney working on behalf o' plaintiffs, our clients is ALWAYS fighting against the state. our clients is gang members and nazis and hare krishnas... not that hare krishnas is in same moral boat as nazis, but, well, point is that our clients is necessarily doing something the government says is inappropriate.

Volourn is correct. If it was common sense for everyone to do what the 'authorities' say no matter what, the entire world would be under totalitarian dictatorship type governments. vol was complete wrong. you people watch far too much tv. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68564-black-celebrity-claims-police-herassement-for-kissing-white-man-in-public/?p=1510179 can read Gromnir's post for what to do when stopped by cops. then you can see bester's example o' a yutz who doesn't follow instructions from a cop who is exceeding authority. actual watch the video and read the responses that follow. sure, if a cop is beating you or attacking your wife, you gotta do what you gotta do, even if you is gonna lose, but refusing to follow police instructions when they is acting with color o' authority is asinine in all but the most extreme (ridiculous) examples. HA! Good Fun!

we grew up learning lakota style bow hunting. we preferred our winchester, bolt-action .22 (til we were big enough to handle a .30-06), but we gots considerable (and harsh) training on the "right" way to hunt with a bow. we did use a belt quiver when on foot, but most other stuff we saw in video were striking us as opinion and conjecture rather than anything else. look for old paintings and tapestries and you see considerable variation o' quiver placement and bow handling. nevertheless, 'ccording to lakota, hold arrow on right side o' the bow is indeed correct, if you is left-handed. notice almost 45 degree angle o' the bow? arrow rests in 'v' made with bow and hand. is a much more stable position for the arrow than on the opposite side o' the bow. such stability is likely more important on horseback, but that is how we were taught. 'course, we were not taught to hunt with a bow while leaping over barrels or pushing off of a wall, so perhaps our skill set were limited by our ultimate and specific goal: kill critters for dinner. wanna see some impressive trick archery done complete different and even more awe inspiring? google "howard hill." *shrug* am suspecting that with so many things, notion o' a right way is wrong. HA! Good Fun!

am joking about baseball... mostly. previous to the 1994 strike season, we were an extreme enthusiastic baseball fan, particularly a white sox fan. strike season ruined baseball for us, and we ain't never returned as a genuine fan. have seen parts o' games in the past few decades, but nothing more. heck, we didn't watch a single game in 2005 and that were the year the white sox won the series. is not that we dislike baseball so much as we hate mlb. HA! Good Fun!

Not sure sedatives help with depression... is a joke that Gromnir uses far too frequent around our colleagues and family who drink to excess: "there is nothing like a depressant to chase the blues away." add the traditional beer drinking that accompanies watching o' baseball and we is wondering why baseball fans is not hurling themselves from bridges like lemmings. HA! Good Fun!

you joke, but at the higher level o' sports, you is correct that there is a great deal o' math involved. sure, the athlete himself may have difficulty with long division, but considering the multi-million dollar investments in many sports, not to mention nationalistic pride, there is invariably somebody looking at the maths. trainers, coaches and equipment designers is frequent needing to understand math as much as somebody is considering human nature and diet and whatever. the maths is excellent at dispelling the myths that spread 'cause some folks can't get over what they believe they know from personal experience. take twin freestyle swimmers with exact same physique and form. both twins is wearing exact same make, brand, and style o' suit and goggles. twin A has a more powerful stroke and he kicks faster than twin B. twin A takes more strokes per second than twin B. so, explain why twin B always wins in races against twin A. the athletes can't explain. the coach with 30 years of experience might not have been able to explain such results. a physicist or expert in caviation who is having access to video footage o' the swimmers from an underwater pov likely could explain the seeming counter-intuitive results. HA! Good Fun!

you are clearly not a cubs fan. HA! Good Fun!

agreed, but to be fair, the written test were actual used in reverse, so to speak. the psychiatrist we grilled were admitting that he and others frequent didn't understand what they were testing. oh sure, they had theories and guesses, but there were no certainty. nevertheless, there were patterns that emerged from testing over time. our written test had many questions... maybe +200. the written test took considerable more time than the psych interview. anywho, for simplicity sake, let's say that the questions on the written test all fell into 3 main categories producing 3 raw scores: red, yellow, blue. why 3? well, we don't recall how many categories there were and 3 is simple. assume 0 for low score and 100 for high. so, persons who scored less than 10 in red and more than 80 in blue, appeared to be 10x more likely than the average applicant to eventual quit or request medical leave due to job stress. is a noteworthy correlation, no? am agreeing that such testing is imperfect, but we cans also see from the pov o' an organization that hires large numbers o' folks... particular a government organization that need meet some different standards regarding hiring and firing. in a thread where we is talking 'bout race and bias, using a mindless and faceless mechanical test to weed out applicants is advantageous to the government. we agree with hurl, but we understand why state/government agencies is so fond o' mechanical tests. HA! Good Fun!

no doubt the tests is different today, but we recall taking various psych tests before being hired by the probation department. one o' the tests were a written/t-f/multi-choice test and part o' being prepared for the test meant knowing how to answer some o' the questions. keep in mind that Gromnir is old, and the internet were an increasingly valuable tool but not as pervasive as it is today. to discuss preparation for psych tests, applicants to local police, sheriffs and other law enforcement groups would either be going to same schools or colleges or they would meet at same bars or go to the same gym. am recalling specific that the physical testing were done previous to psych, and at the physical testing, at which there were a couple dozen folks, the main topic o' discussion were the psych tests and which questions were "trick" questions. so anyways, we take the silly written tests and we have 30 minute interview with a psychiatrist. at the end o' the interview, the psychiatrist asked us if we had any questions. am thinking he were kinda startled when we did indeed begin to ask him questions about the process. for example, we noted that applicants seemed to be aware o' a great many o' the questions we received during the written test and the psychiatrist interview and as such we wondered if the headshrinker believed that such knowledge diminished the value o' the testing process. we also observed that particular on the written test, there were perceived wrong answers that could result in an auto-fail. "did you like the book, Alice in Wonderland?" is one example... the applicants seemed to believe it were a drug-culture question. Gromnir observed that we did indeed like Lewis Carroll's work and as such we had answered in the affirmative. our interview with the psychiatrist were no doubt the longest he had that day. the headshrinker did observe that awareness o' the tests were problematic, but not necessarily in the way we expected. for instance, the psych observed that there weren't actual 'gotcha' questions on the written test. he suspected that the Lewis Carroll question were actually part o' a group o' questions that were likely meant to identify applicant aesthetic-- the results o' the test provided crude numerical scores in various broad categories, so no individual question were any more important than any other. in any event, being prepared for the tests way back in Gromnir's day were not actual particularly useful preparation. the misinformation surrounding the tests were more harmful than anything else. HA! Good Fun!

yes, we went there. HA! Good Fun!

I definitely don't begrudge people who have faith, I have an issue when that faith leads to a person suffering in this world because of the belief in that faith. Like Manifested's mom and g-mom. Why can't she get married again and have company? Why can't his gran know the truth about her condition? I battle to see how these are examples when faith is good in the real world because to me this seems be about suffering and misery? when faith is good? we just don't have the kinda arrogance to make that judgement. where another person's beliefs infringe 'pon our capacity to enjoy our beliefs and our life, then we is gonna step in to stop an injustice. mess with Gromnir's peaceful, easy feeling is the very definition o' injustice. your faith shouldn't trump our (or anybody else's, we s'pose) faith... or our lack o' faith. 'course, our notion, and your notion, o' what is fair and right is ultimate based on faith, yes? we need not remain silent when we see practices, faith-based or otherwise, that rob person's o' their human dignity, but how far can we go beyond voicing our concerns and arguing for enlightenment? we can't claim perfect knowledge regarding what constitutes good faith, and we sure as hell don't trust anybody else to make such choices. if we had a daughter, we would never wish for her to become muslim. we would plead with our daughter not to choose islam. we would likely eventual beg her not to choose islam. we don't believe islamic faith is necessarily evil, but we do not like how women is treated in that faith. we think the manner in which a vast majority o' islamic world treats women is unjust. nevertheless, at what point does we get to choose a good faith for our hypothetical daughter, or any other woman? we just don't have the arrogance to make such choices. we believe with all earnestness and good faith that we don't have that right. also, just as a kinda side issue, the family's decision to keep manifested's grandmother unaware o' her illness don't sound as if it is specific related to a question o' 'faith' as you is using the term. grandmom is ill and the cancer has metastasized in her brain and spine, yes? the family, right or wrong, chooses not to inform manifested's grandmother that she is dying o' cancer, because manifested's grandmother is terrified o' cancer, yes? am not aware o' a tenant o' the mormon faith that requires that terminally ill cancer patients be kept unawares o' their condition, though we could be wrong. we still don't comprehend mormon magic underwear, so we could be mistaken. regardless, having been in a similar situation our self, we know that the choice the family made must not have been easy. if our mother had been +90 and already suffering from the dementia that so often accompanies late stage cancer, we too might have chosen ignorance. dunno. when faith is good? we got no idea what that means, but we do know that many people would disagree with whatever moral calculus Gromnir might utilize to divine good from evil. as long as their faith don't interfere with our life, we feels as if we gotta give people the same right o' self-determination that we demand for our self. HA! Good Fun!

quick aside: we do not look down 'pon or begrudeg the faith o' anybody who believes in an afterlife. the world can be a damnably unforgiving and miserable place. is many who manage to find joy in this world precisely 'cause they believe their true reward will come in the next life. is many who simple endure this world and the only thing that gives 'em strength to do so is their faith. the fact that we do not share similar beliefs does not mean we scoff at those that do. we believe in love. we believe in honor. we believe in a great many pleasant fantasies that has no objective reality beyond our faith in them. in point o' fact, we has said more than once that the things in life most worth living for, worth dying for, is all requiring faith. so no, we do not begrudge those who believe in an afterlife. we ain't that kinda hypocrite. HA! Good Fun!

we weren't aware that doctors could choose to remove the patient from the decision making process if the patient were capable o' understanding the diagnosis and treatment/non-treatment options. am admitting we is a bit conflicted though. we were raised by grandparents til we hit our teens, and were never close with our mother, but we were present when mom got the news that she had cancer (4th time) and that there were no meaningful treatment options. fear. if we had been able to give mom one or two months o' ignorance we mighta' chosen to do so even though intellectually we thinks that doing so is wrong. as we said, we weren't close to our mom, but seeing her diminished by fear were not pleasant for anybody in the room at the time, and particularly not for our mother. as for wacky afterlife beliefs? we grew up hearing lakota traditions as well as catholic and am honestly not sure which we find more difficult to believe. not matter though as Gromnir is largely unconcerned with afterlife. am a simple man and so we concern our self with the world we is now in rather than one that may exist beyond death's door. we volunteer at local food banks and give to charity not 'cause o' beliefs that we will get rewarded post mortem. somehow, expectations o' eventual reward feels likes it cheapens our efforts. HA! Good Fun!

doesn't really matter. we did mention about "treating critters" to clarify the intentional ambiguity, but the truth is that scenario were actual involving lawyers. "let's say they were vets," were thrown in 'cause who sympathizes with a, 'lawyers is a bunch o' jack-offs' story? we thought our "let's say they were vets" were making obvious that they weren't vets or veterinarians, but sometimes Gromnir is too wily for own good. apologies for any confusion that were not intended. HA! Good Fun!

"It was just a bummer to be let go from the company you started" gotta friend who had a similar experience. he started up a partnership with a handful o' colleagues... lets say they were vets, 'cause who doesn't like vets? first 18 months o' the new business were hell with most partners needing to max out credit cards to keep business afloat and be able to eat regular. many sleepless nights. however, after somewhere 'tween 24 and 30 months, the partnership finally reached that point wherein our friend were able to relax a bit and deal with more simple day-to-day problems including actual treating critters. unfortunately, our friend had some unexpected medical problems that his insurance did not complete cover and regardless, he were not gonna be able to be working full time for at least a year, if ever. so, 'cause he needed extra cash, and 'cause he didn't wanna be a d!ck, he offered the other partners a chance to buy him out o' the partnership for almost nothing other than the promise that he would continue to be employed as a part-time staff vet for at least X years. six month pass and our friend gets fired. his partners knew he didn't have money enough to hire a lawyer, and even if he could get somebody to take the case on contingency, he didn't have time. his partners, ex-partners, implied that they would make it very difficult for our friend to get a job as a vet anywhere within 1000 miles if any kinda lawsuit talk were started. so, our friend gets a small goodbye check and is then shown the exit. vets is a bunch o' jack-offs. HA! Good Fun!

"I could tell you from first hand experience " quit it. just stop for chrissakes. when is you gonna give up the anecdotal nonsense? doesn't matter if it is your or ours. you Feel like aerodynamics is unimportant. you feel like orange juice and strong man exercises is a key to stronger immune system. give it up, please. singular examples and anecdotal evidence is pointless. useless. and observing the importance o' speed as a variable is funny considering we already made that point. "air resistance is the primary source o' drag a cyclist faces. the role o' air resistance increases as does speed." sure, 80% is a ballpark figure, but it is illustrative when speaking of actual cyclist speeds such as you described above and elsewhere... 100kph and such? and you not know how to use your own freaking calculator. am gonna quote from previous linked PHYSICS article, 'cause we is repeating self, and why should we waste effort if you won't read anyway? 1) "Mechanical drag is pretty much a small, fixed number. It hardly varies from bike to bike. Even the new fancy ceramic bearings do very little to make an appreciable dent in mechanical drag. The chain is the biggest source of friction, and there haven’t been any advances in chain technology in 100 years." try to grasp the notion o' a constant. 2) when considering the impact o' air resistance, "The drag force is important, to be sure, but we are here to talk about power. Power is the product of force and velocity. But, what velocity do we use – the road speed or the effective wind speed? In this case, we use road speed. The speed of the wind in your face determines the drag force; the speed at which we drive the bike determines how much power it takes to overcome that drag force. Multiplying the above equation by road speed, we get: Power to Overcome Wind Resistance = ½*(air_density)*CdA*V_wind^2*V_road. In any conditions with ambient wind, these two velocity terms will not be the same. Naturally, they are related since increasing road speed will increase the headwind. We can solve the equation for any given situation. When dealing with wind, you can’t control the air density or the ambient wind. Since you want your road speed to be as high as possible, the only variable left under your control at a given power output is your CdA. CdA can be managed via bike equipment, clothing and rider positioning. Bike equipment that has been demonstrated to reduce CdA includes deep-rimmed and disc wheels, wheel covers, aerodynamic framesets and forks, and handlebars that present a low profile to the wind. These components can reduce both the Cd and the A parts of the CdA figure. A bike rider can reduce her CdA by wearing tight-fitting clothing. Anything that flaps in the wind increases CdA. An aerodynamically designed racing helmet can make a significant improvement in CdA as it makes the rider more streamlined, lowering the Cd. Finally, the rider’s position on the bike is the single largest determinant of CdA. If you sit up straight, your CdA will be high. If you bend over and tuck your chin down into your chest, your CdA will be lower. The CdA of the combined bike and rider in a triathlon can fall into the range of about 0.25 to 0.33. I will note that very few people get as low as 0.25; the fat part of the bell curve seems to be in the 0.28-0.31 range and plenty of folks are over 0.33. Running a few examples… CdA = 0.28 or 0.31 V_wind = 20 mph V_road = 20 mph (ie, a calm day) Air_dens. = 1.22 The power to overcome wind resistance at 20 mph on a calm day can be either 122 watts or it can be 135 watts, in this example. That is 13 watts difference, equating to about 8 minutes in an Ironman for an AG racer. Just what is the difference between a rider with a CdA of 0.28 and another with 0.31? Probably nothing you can see by just looking at them. One might or might not “appear” any more aero than the other. They could have identical bikes and equipment, and fitness, and be coming into T2 eight minutes apart simply because one tucked his head down for 6 hours. If they do happen to come into T2 together, one twin will have ridden 13 watts harder, and will be easily outrun by his buddy. Without specific and careful testing, it is hard to know for sure whether two similar positions have a similar CdA. Contrary to a bit of conventional lore, you don’t need to be fast to benefit from lowering your CdA. In fact, the slower you are, the more time you save by a given amount of CdA reduction. A deep-rimmed front wheel might be good for Chris Lieto, but it is really good for you and me. Another thing you might note from this article is that, while cyclists tend to not think much about tires, the choice of tires can have a bigger effect on saving time than does the selection of aero bike gear or bike positioning. You might also note the role that weight plays in these equations. The total bike and rider mass enters the equations in just one place (tire drag), and its effect is multiplied by speed. CdA, on the other hand, is multiplied by speed raised to the third power. In a sense, reducing your CdA is three orders of magnitude more important than saving weight when on flat ground. 3) ok, now for gravity ... and am not even gonna bother with 20° stuff as an illustrative example o' something typical, especially with your 60kph nonsense earlier. Power to Lift the Bike up a Hill = M*g*[sin(arctan(slope))]*V_road, where V_road = Road speed, as before M = Weight of bike and rider and gear g = The gravitational acceleration (9. sin(arctan(slope)) = The sine of the arctangent of the road slope slope = road slope, expressed a percentage: rise divided by run. A road that rises 6 feet for every 100 feet of horizontal travel is a 6% slope. The multiplication of the V_road and sin(arctan) terms together essentially spits out the velocity in the vertical direction – how fast you are lifting the bike. The rate of lifting, times your weight, times the gravity constant…gives you the power required to lift the bike. Again, that power is used up and is not available to drive the bike forward. Riding up a 4.5% slope at 200 watts will net me around 10 mph. About 170 of those watts are being used in lifting me up the hill; only 30 watts are moving me forward. Now for the fun part – rolling over the top. If all those 200 watts didn’t go into driving me forward, where did they go? Energy is conserved, right? You bet – those extra watts got stored up as potential energy. When you begin to coast downhill, you pour out that stored gravitational potential energy. On that 4.5% grade, I am going to coast up to about 30 mph if I just stay in the same sitting-up position on my bike with a CdA of 0.31 (I’m a timid descender). I’m producing zero watts, but what is going on in total? Gravity is doing all the work for me – producing about 530 watts! That’s the wattage requirement for traveling at 30 mph and overcoming wind and tire drag. Every watt you spend getting up the hill is returned to you coming back down. However, there is a catch. You don’t get the time back, only the power. The reason is that you went up slow and lost very little power to the wind. When you come back down fast, you lose lots of power to the wind. So, while the total energy and power is preserved riding up and coasting down, you lose time in the hills because of wind resistance. Why do hills slow us down? Aerodynamics. At a given bike + rider weight, and with a given amount of fitness, the fastest way up and down a hill is to have good aerodynamics. That’s an interesting twist, eh? possibly significant is the following from Doctor David Swain, an expert on sports medicine http://www.sportsci.org/encyc/cyclingupdown/cyclingupdown.html quoted starts As indicated in the following equation, there are three primary forces to be overcome in bicycling: rolling resistance, air resistance and gravity: W = krMs + kaAsv2 + giMs where W is power, kr is the rolling resistance coefficient, M is the combined mass of cyclist and bicycle, s is the bicycle speed on the road, ka is the air resistance coefficient, A is the combined frontal area of cyclist and bicycle, v is the bicycle speed through the air (i.e. road speed plus head wind speed), g is the gravitational acceleration constant, and i is the road incline (grade; however, this is only an approximation, as the sine of the road angle to the horizontal should technically be used). On modern bicycles with narrow, high pressure tires, rolling resistance is negligible. Since the power required to overcome air resistance is proportional to the bicycle speed cubed (if there is no wind, and s = v), an exponential increase in power is needed as the cyclist attempts to increase speed. Going uphill adds gravity to the forces that must be overcome. Since the cyclist has a finite power supply, he or she must necessarily slow down in proportion to the steepness of the hill, if steady-state aerobic metabolism is to be maintained. While this effect of hills is obvious, more subtle effects of this shift in forces have a dramatic impact on the competition. end quote. now here is where the good dr. now, as noted already, speed is obvious extreme important when considering this topic, but for every uphill climb, there is a downhill as well and aerodynamics again. furthermore, sadly for woldan, descent takes less time than the ascent. why is that a factor? "Small cyclists excel at hill climbing because they generally have greater relative aerobic power (VO2max in ml·min-1·kg-1 ) than do large cyclists. This is also a consequence of scaling geometry: relative to body mass, smaller organisms have greater alveolar and capillary surface areas in the lungs, greater capillary surface areas in the muscles, and greater cross-sectional area of arteries for the delivery of blood." the small cyclist, regardless o' woldan's anecdotal misconceptions about strength, has an advantage on the slow uphill climb compared to the larger and seemingly stronger cyclists, whose actual advantage comes on the downslope where they gots a better mass/acceleration ratio. "Scaling reveals that larger cyclists have a greater ratio of mass to frontal area. They therefore descend hills faster as a consequence of purely physical, not physiological, laws. Since the larger cyclist has a greater mass, gravity acts on him or her with a greater force than it does on a smaller cyclist. (Note: A common misconception is to note the equal acceleration of two different sized objects in free fall in a vacuum, and assume that the force of gravity on both is equal. The force on the more massive object is greater, being exactly proportional to mass, which is why the more massive object is accelerated at the same rate as the less massive one.) While the larger cyclist also has a greater absolute frontal area than the smaller cyclist, the difference is not as great as that for their masses. Thus, the larger cyclist will attain a greater s3 before a balance of forces results in terminal velocity." unfortunately for woldan, uphill takes longer than downhill, and time is a multiplying factor, so once again we see an advantage for the smaller and more aerodynamic cyclist. you is getting constants and variables confused and is mindless adding in numbers without understanding what they mean. oh, and the VO2 max numbers is also figured into our rock climbing hypothetical... and showing us smaller guys from a gym is not in anyway diminishing the observation that strongmen and powerlifters (*chuckle*) is having less efficient builds and strength for an activity sch as rock climbing. the guys at the top o' the "sport" can barely reach the rock climbing wall with their arms fully extended past their chest and gut, and they is still needing to carry far more total mass up the rock wall wherein dynamic strength and endurance is far more vital than is the ability to lift large weights in a single move or over a relative brief period o' time. oh, and since you like pictures compare to your picture above. this guy (silly pic, but is Alex Honnold, arguable the bestest rock climber in the world) is hard, but he is built complete different than the guys you pictured above. can your pictured guys climb rock walls? is likely, but they is working at a disadvantage 'cause they carry more weight and if they is training to be strongmen, they got exact the wrong strength... hell, recall that you told us you don't even sweat when working out with weights. imagine a sweat-less rock climber and we will show you a guy with heat stroke. so, compare one of the world's elite rock climbers to an elite strongman the exercises (not events) the strong man did to become elite is what got him his noble physique. whatever. HA! Good Fun!

you never tire of being wrong. you has said powerlifting innumerable times. we used visual and written examples o' powerlifting and you didn't change toon. so now it is strongman? *chuckle* fine. describe which strongman events you would recommend to longknife. while you do so, we will amuse our self as we picture famous strongmen showing off their rock climbing skills. http://www.strongman.org/events/?PageSpeed=noscript regardless, we do hope you will finally abandon the anecdotal nonsense, but perhaps that is too much to hope for. http://www.slowtwitch.com/Tech/The_Physics_of_Moving_a_Bike_163.html air resistance is the primary source o' drag a cyclist faces. the role o' air resistance increases as does speed. am wondering how much help you is gonna need to understand drag and aerodynamics. "At high speeds, racing a bicycle can feel like swimming through water: you can really feel the air pushing against you and (as we've already seen) you use around 80 percent of your energy overcoming drag. Now a bicycle is pretty thin and streamlined, but a cyclist's body is much fatter and wider. In practice, a cyclist's body creates twice as much drag as their bicycle. That's why cyclists wear tight neoprene clothing and pointed helmets to streamline themselves and minimize energy losses." 80%. is not anecdotal 80%. is physics. sheesh. HA! Good Fun!

perhaps like an alternate ww1 universe with freaking vampires in it? HA! Good Fun!

this is not a thread, but as pm in disguise? am not fionavar's biggest fan, but if you want an answer from him, am suspecting a pm is the best route to get one. HA! Good Fun!

will this be the first obsidian game you have ever played? HA! Good Fun!

sorry, but you haven't "proofed" anything in this thread yet. nice picture o' your bike though, so... thanks for sharing? http://www.powerlifting-ipf.com/ oh, and by definition, the goal o' powerlifting is max on the three core lifts. HA! Good Fun!

numbers added by Gromnir for convenience. point 1-- is not something we see as positive... and clear your notion o' "ages" is different than ours. point 2-- to quote vol, "no." point 3-- uh, the nyt "unmasked" scientology in the 1990s, and scientology has has been kinda the brunt o' jokes everywhere save for hollywood for a very long time. heck, fallout 2 included the hubologists as a pretty obvious parody o' scientology. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

game achievements leave Gromnir flaccid. in any event, if past experience is any guide, beginning with difficulty set to hard, we will play about 1/3 o' poe content 8 or 9 times before we get a character and party with which we feels comfortable completing the game. "crap. playing a character with an intelligence less than 14 is gimping the experience?" will be be numerous such revelations along the way. once we finally finish the game, we will likely replay again, but with a different main character and a different party composition. we will then be exhausted by the game. *six months to a year will pass* eventually an expansion will be released or we will get bored with all current games and we will replay poe. all o' which assumes that we like poe. no likey means we get 10-20 hours o' gameply invested on poe 'cause we is stubborn, and then we give-up and read a book or re-grout bathroom tile or some other such activity. am never gonna bother playing solo, and chances are we don't utilize some o' the Beyond Hard Mode features neither. HA! Good Fun!

Maybe when the humbly self professed "sensible folks" can drop the passive aggressive attitude? well, enoch didn't seem all that passive, and lord knows that our scorn for all things gamer's gate is open and notorious. we could lean across the table and spit in the bisque o' anybody who brings up gg in any thread save for the one referencing 'gaming journalism,' but hardly anybody eats bisque and we is not all actual sitting at the same table. am not certain how we can be more aggressive and less passive without being over-the-top. HA! Good Fun!

you have my genuine sympathy, which is not the same as pity. i have, over the years, found myself at employment crossroads. the true moments of dread in my life have occurred at such lonely and fearful intersections. uncertain of how to best move forward, i would second-guess every choice that had brought me to such a terrible place. i hated myself for such thoughts, but the belief, the certainty, that my foolhardiness would result in suffering for my loved ones was both intolerable and unavoidable. looking back at the crossroads, i realize that most of the fears i conjured up while loitering in such places were unfounded, a terrible synthesis of guilt and imagination. the same pitiless inertia that had filled my stomach with snakes made of ice and barbwire, eventually pulled or pushed me... forward. nevertheless, tomorrow may not be better. next week may not be better. next year may not be better. at some subtle and ultimately meaningless point it will no longer matter if your situation gets better. eventually you will succumb to inertia and move forward and develop a new routine, a new normal. good luck.