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Faction Halls / Re: The Remnants [NA] Official
« on: January 28, 2022, 09:21:29 pm »
Most Ironic Clan 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, & 2022 🏆
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Faction Halls / Re: The Free Companies of Calradia
« on: January 28, 2022, 09:19:46 pm »
we are still in trouble
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Faction Halls / Re: K R E M S
« on: January 28, 2022, 09:17:54 pm »
hello is this the Nwankwo Kanu Club & Center for Diversity, can I join u
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General Off Topic / Re: Microsoft buys LinkedIn for $26.2 billion
« on: June 23, 2016, 06:59:59 am »
Here you go, Heskey and friends. I was in an extremely sheltered community until about 12. Despite constant exposure to the outside world, the view my parents wanted me to have was always reinforced by them, my childhood friends, their parents, and pretty much everyone in my life. So we'd see something they disapproved of (say a lady wearing a top that exposed part of her midriff, someone drinking alcohol, etc) and they'd talk about how bad that was later, how they felt sorry for her sins, etc.
It wasn't till the first year of high school (when I interacted with openly gay folks regularly without the constant reminder from family and other friends) that I realized they were doing nothing wrong. I mean, I'd already started questioning my beliefs earlier than that, but I still parroted the lines, so to speak. I didn't openly leave the church until I graduated high school. Nine years later, I'm an atheist polyamorous man who wouldn't think twice about kissing a dude I found attractive.
We're all heavily influenced by their communities and peer groups. It takes a certain kind of stubbornness to tell your entire community to fuck off, essentially. Worst still, when you change your beliefs, you've got to admit that you were wrong. You've lost. Your identity, say, as a Christian, is under attack. Are you going to compromise that belief that forms a key part of your identity, or are you going to let go of your entire identity? For a lot of people, it's easier to just change their belief a little bit (by saying stuff like 'actually, God loves everyone, so we're fine with homosexuals') rather than throw away the entire identity.
Now imagine you live in a community where not being Christian might hurt your chances at finding a job or getting laid.
It wasn't till the first year of high school (when I interacted with openly gay folks regularly without the constant reminder from family and other friends) that I realized they were doing nothing wrong. I mean, I'd already started questioning my beliefs earlier than that, but I still parroted the lines, so to speak. I didn't openly leave the church until I graduated high school. Nine years later, I'm an atheist polyamorous man who wouldn't think twice about kissing a dude I found attractive.
We're all heavily influenced by their communities and peer groups. It takes a certain kind of stubbornness to tell your entire community to fuck off, essentially. Worst still, when you change your beliefs, you've got to admit that you were wrong. You've lost. Your identity, say, as a Christian, is under attack. Are you going to compromise that belief that forms a key part of your identity, or are you going to let go of your entire identity? For a lot of people, it's easier to just change their belief a little bit (by saying stuff like 'actually, God loves everyone, so we're fine with homosexuals') rather than throw away the entire identity.
Now imagine you live in a community where not being Christian might hurt your chances at finding a job or getting laid.
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General Off Topic / Re: HBO's Game of Thrones. [No Book Spoilers]
« on: June 22, 2016, 11:36:14 pm »
Sansa is now the worst. She's like Cersei, except not played by Lena Headey.
And Torben, they could go in very interesting directions- like the Blackfyre Rebellion, Dance of Dragons, Dunk & Egg, etc
They'd probably just do Robert's Rebellion, because tv produced the shit that is Gotham. Apparently branding is all that matters to viewers.
And Torben, they could go in very interesting directions- like the Blackfyre Rebellion, Dance of Dragons, Dunk & Egg, etc
They'd probably just do Robert's Rebellion, because tv produced the shit that is Gotham. Apparently branding is all that matters to viewers.
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General Off Topic / Re: Captain America Civil War
« on: May 07, 2016, 05:32:03 pm »
They did crazy plot gymnastics. To be clear, the reason why Civil War didn't work as a plot (I realize that they're one of the best selling events and a lot of people like them) in the comics is because too many characters were forced to play roles that didn't suit them. This didn't have as much of an issue with that, and we had Black Widow playing audience with her constant 'wtf are you idiots doing'.
The camerawork stayed out of the way (neither a good or bad thing, just a thing), the choreography was great, and the acting was competent. Bruhl was as great as he is in everything. Rudd, Mackie, and Holland handled the comedy well. Rhodes could've had issues, but Cheadle pulled it off. Boseman and Renner gave their roles appropriate character. I was delighted by the domestic portrayal of Vision, since the current Vision comics are some of the best examples of the medium and genre.
The score lacked something, though.
I don't know why they didn't cast Olsen as Jessica Drew and give Scarlet Witch, if they had to have her, to, say, Isolda Dychauk. I do wonder how they're going to handle robosexuality.
Actually, that sums up the whole movie. It should've been a wreck. We should've had some Bryan Singer-esque guffaws, but they pulled it off. I'm firmly behind the Russo brothers, now. I mean, I loved Arrested Development and Community, but what the hell, they made a movie with a ridiculous amount of corporate entanglement and dozens of different branding interests work.
The camerawork stayed out of the way (neither a good or bad thing, just a thing), the choreography was great, and the acting was competent. Bruhl was as great as he is in everything. Rudd, Mackie, and Holland handled the comedy well. Rhodes could've had issues, but Cheadle pulled it off. Boseman and Renner gave their roles appropriate character. I was delighted by the domestic portrayal of Vision, since the current Vision comics are some of the best examples of the medium and genre.
The score lacked something, though.
I don't know why they didn't cast Olsen as Jessica Drew and give Scarlet Witch, if they had to have her, to, say, Isolda Dychauk. I do wonder how they're going to handle robosexuality.
Actually, that sums up the whole movie. It should've been a wreck. We should've had some Bryan Singer-esque guffaws, but they pulled it off. I'm firmly behind the Russo brothers, now. I mean, I loved Arrested Development and Community, but what the hell, they made a movie with a ridiculous amount of corporate entanglement and dozens of different branding interests work.
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General / Re: Melee: Battlegrounds is dead! Long Live....
« on: May 03, 2016, 08:30:42 pm »
OKaM's razor suggests it.
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General Off Topic / Re: You should really take some precautions when streaming on Twitch
« on: May 03, 2016, 04:20:38 pm »What is the point of these twitch whores?
Looks like great alt marketing to me. If you can find a niche to capitalize on, wouldn't you do it? If I thought I could make as much money playing twitch games while flirting with viewers/bringing new customers into my chaturbate account as I could flipping burgers, I'd do it. Hell, I'd do it just to fund my gaming.
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General Off Topic / Re: The western thread
« on: April 25, 2016, 02:15:47 am »
I enjoyed Deadwood when it was coming out. No idea if it holds up, but Justified is truly great. It's got a lot of western vibes, even though it's set in the modern day.
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General Off Topic / Re: Hardcore Henry (movie review)
« on: April 19, 2016, 05:39:29 pm »Did those guys already release one of those fps movies before that? I felt like I watched one already just like it, but different.
On youtube some year ago. That's how the Director got discovered by the producers here, I'm pretty sure.
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General Off Topic / Re: Diversity and division
« on: April 12, 2016, 07:30:21 pm »
I don't know why cultural appropriation gets a bad reputation. It's how cultures grow. In an ideal world, this would function like this: you see something cool or more effective that some other culture does, and then you do it too. It's this model that attempts at assimilation should follow. Encouraging new groups of people to build enclaves instead of absorbing them into the wider population is problematic.
Imagine a country is a giant amorphous jelly like ball. Say your country is a red ball. Right now, when blue people come in, they make tiny little blue balls inside your giant red ball. Instead, they should be absorbed into your red ball, so your red ball gets a little purple.
Oddly enough, colonization and imperialism occasionally did this right. Don't get me wrong, most of it was horrible for the people involved, but you've got to look at the good as well as the bad. If you're a human, your ancestors lost to a foreign culture at some point. I sure as hell wouldn't agree with how any of my ancestors lived. Hell, I disagree with living the way my parents live.
There's a curious effect in the United States. Millenials move to cities where people in their subculture are more common, and in a way, make themselves more homogeneous. Sure, these new subcultures are not necessarily connected to ethnicity or nationalism, but it's still a division that will probably threaten stability in the future.
Imagine a country is a giant amorphous jelly like ball. Say your country is a red ball. Right now, when blue people come in, they make tiny little blue balls inside your giant red ball. Instead, they should be absorbed into your red ball, so your red ball gets a little purple.
Oddly enough, colonization and imperialism occasionally did this right. Don't get me wrong, most of it was horrible for the people involved, but you've got to look at the good as well as the bad. If you're a human, your ancestors lost to a foreign culture at some point. I sure as hell wouldn't agree with how any of my ancestors lived. Hell, I disagree with living the way my parents live.
There's a curious effect in the United States. Millenials move to cities where people in their subculture are more common, and in a way, make themselves more homogeneous. Sure, these new subcultures are not necessarily connected to ethnicity or nationalism, but it's still a division that will probably threaten stability in the future.
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General Off Topic / Re: Procrastination
« on: April 11, 2016, 09:52:26 pm »
We act like we're fully in control of ourselves, but few people are. There's the 'immediate reaction you', 'the you' that you need survive a lion attack or whatever, that gets in the way of the 'long term you'- 'the you' that goes a little hungry in order to stock up food for the winter. Often, we attempt to tell our in-the-moment self he should do something, and then he doesn't, and then you feel guilty, and then you think...why try? It's not like anything matters. It's not like I matter. Might as well have fun and ride the tide, right?
Except there is a choice. You just treat your in-the-moment self as a different person. If something doesn't work, it's the system you used to motivate that person that failed, not you. You've just got to keep trying until you find things that worked- like a constant experiment to see what works when training a dog. Except you're not training a dog, you're training yourself.
Not all the same things work for everyone because human minds are complex, which is probably part of why there's been little progress in finding effective methods, there.
I've found that framing my real life like a game helped a lot. You often consume some media (a game, a movie, a book, etc) and think "Ah! If only I was in this magical world I would have a life that mattered and save the world, etc, or fix things, or live a life of fun adventure, etc." Except, if we really got zapped into such a world, we'd probably be random NPC #677229, slacking at his farm and shooting the shit at the village. You don't care about the evil empires, the necromancers, or the shitty guild that's ruining things nearby. You just want to get to the end of the week, drink your ale, play some cards, and stare at the commotion when some big strapping hero with white hair and two swords comes by and starts some shit. And then you go back to your life.
You do have opportunities. Things aren't as clear cut as they are in games, but there are lofty missions to pursue, though they might seem much more boring than fighting a monster. Oh, and there are monsters too, but they're hard to find, and fairly rare in our well-developed societies. The biggest ones are more common, but they're ephemeral, herculean problems that no one thought to tackle until some independently minded problem solver got lucky on the 31234234 time trying. Even if you fail with one of these big bosses, the next hero who comes along might learn from your failure, and win the fight one day.
So find a mission. Break it down. Determine what stats you need to take on such a mission, and then what you have to do to grind those stats. Break the action down to the tiniest levels, and always have them in the back of your mind. When you feel like procrastinating, procrastinate with side missions. For example, your main mission might be to save lives in the simplest and most direct sense, so you decide that the best way to do that is to become a trauma physician. You figure out all the little steps needed to become a physician, and break it down to the point that you know your next step is writing a letter to Dr. Bob to get a recommendation so you can get into med school next year, or finish page 2 of organic chem. Your side mission might be 'become a musician', and you've decided that guitar is the easiest thing for you to learn, so your next step there is matching chords to pitch, with your eyes closed. When you procrastinate with your organic chem homework, procrastinate by practicing guitar. That way, even your procrastination is productive. I'm not saying eliminate all mindless pleasure. Just reserve it for real downtime.
We like games because they're full of small successes and chances to correct our mistakes. They're simple enough that it's easy enough to spot our mistakes once we've made them. Real life often has too much data to do that, but you can break down every task further and find ways to evaluate yourself until it's just a next action. If you say "I want to succeed socially", you've got to figure out what that means. You figure out how people communicate, how they think, and you break it down and see what your biggest mistakes are and fix that. So after looking at the quality of your voice, the content of what you say, your mindset, and your body language you might realize that your voice just sounds weird and reedy, so now you know you might benefit from a vocal coach, or just learning everything you can about voice training. You find out what some of the exercises are, and you know you want to breathe with your diaphragm and speak from the back of your throat. That's a lot easier than 'succeed socially', and it's easier to see progress there, and once you succeed once you can apply the same process to find the next 5 second action to complete.
That little dose of pleasure you get when snipe someone from across the map? That's the kind of pleasure you need to be able to derive from learning the skills you care about in real life.
Except there is a choice. You just treat your in-the-moment self as a different person. If something doesn't work, it's the system you used to motivate that person that failed, not you. You've just got to keep trying until you find things that worked- like a constant experiment to see what works when training a dog. Except you're not training a dog, you're training yourself.
Not all the same things work for everyone because human minds are complex, which is probably part of why there's been little progress in finding effective methods, there.
I've found that framing my real life like a game helped a lot. You often consume some media (a game, a movie, a book, etc) and think "Ah! If only I was in this magical world I would have a life that mattered and save the world, etc, or fix things, or live a life of fun adventure, etc." Except, if we really got zapped into such a world, we'd probably be random NPC #677229, slacking at his farm and shooting the shit at the village. You don't care about the evil empires, the necromancers, or the shitty guild that's ruining things nearby. You just want to get to the end of the week, drink your ale, play some cards, and stare at the commotion when some big strapping hero with white hair and two swords comes by and starts some shit. And then you go back to your life.
You do have opportunities. Things aren't as clear cut as they are in games, but there are lofty missions to pursue, though they might seem much more boring than fighting a monster. Oh, and there are monsters too, but they're hard to find, and fairly rare in our well-developed societies. The biggest ones are more common, but they're ephemeral, herculean problems that no one thought to tackle until some independently minded problem solver got lucky on the 31234234 time trying. Even if you fail with one of these big bosses, the next hero who comes along might learn from your failure, and win the fight one day.
So find a mission. Break it down. Determine what stats you need to take on such a mission, and then what you have to do to grind those stats. Break the action down to the tiniest levels, and always have them in the back of your mind. When you feel like procrastinating, procrastinate with side missions. For example, your main mission might be to save lives in the simplest and most direct sense, so you decide that the best way to do that is to become a trauma physician. You figure out all the little steps needed to become a physician, and break it down to the point that you know your next step is writing a letter to Dr. Bob to get a recommendation so you can get into med school next year, or finish page 2 of organic chem. Your side mission might be 'become a musician', and you've decided that guitar is the easiest thing for you to learn, so your next step there is matching chords to pitch, with your eyes closed. When you procrastinate with your organic chem homework, procrastinate by practicing guitar. That way, even your procrastination is productive. I'm not saying eliminate all mindless pleasure. Just reserve it for real downtime.
We like games because they're full of small successes and chances to correct our mistakes. They're simple enough that it's easy enough to spot our mistakes once we've made them. Real life often has too much data to do that, but you can break down every task further and find ways to evaluate yourself until it's just a next action. If you say "I want to succeed socially", you've got to figure out what that means. You figure out how people communicate, how they think, and you break it down and see what your biggest mistakes are and fix that. So after looking at the quality of your voice, the content of what you say, your mindset, and your body language you might realize that your voice just sounds weird and reedy, so now you know you might benefit from a vocal coach, or just learning everything you can about voice training. You find out what some of the exercises are, and you know you want to breathe with your diaphragm and speak from the back of your throat. That's a lot easier than 'succeed socially', and it's easier to see progress there, and once you succeed once you can apply the same process to find the next 5 second action to complete.
That little dose of pleasure you get when snipe someone from across the map? That's the kind of pleasure you need to be able to derive from learning the skills you care about in real life.
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General Off Topic / Re: Meanwhile in tax haven
« on: April 07, 2016, 09:10:50 pm »Ranking these as anything but inconsequential would be failing to understand the point of taxation.
You're right about that.
I don't know if a lot of the rage that stems from the 'common man' is due to the impact of untaxed revenue, though.
I think it's just 'rich people breaking rules'. That's the sentiment that comment is addressing.
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General Off Topic / Re: Rogue One (Star Wars) Trailer Released
« on: April 07, 2016, 09:06:15 pm »Epic Fail, Anders.
And yay! They finally combined Ip-Man and Star Wars... about damn time!
I'm worried they won't use Donnie Yen properly. They had Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian from The Raid in The Force Awakens, but we didn't get any epic fight scenes out of that. It was essentially a cameo.
Lastly, take a look at the director and lead writer. The guy who brought us Godzilla and Monsters, and the guy who gave us...Cinderella. I'm guessing they're going to act like it's going to be an action movie, but it ends up being a bunch of people brooding all over the place.
I can hope, though. Boy can I hope. I hope it turns out to be Seven Samurai in Star Wars.