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I am! :) That sounds amazing.

Please switch between Danger Zone and (You've Lost) That Lovin' Feeling.

Sure, but it's the landscape you have to navigate. May be topsy-turvy, but you have to consider what you have the power to change, and then budget your power appropriately.

Paid for by the National Sunflower Council.

It's always about consequences and probabilities.

There is always a non-zero probability of a child wandering into your space while you are performing sexual acts. If you want to reduce the chance of this to zero, become perfectly asexual.

There is always a non-zero probability of law enforcement finding something you are doing objectionable. If you want to reduce the chance of this to zero, don't live where there are laws.

Other than that, look at the actual probability of someone of your race, gender, socioeconomic background, etc. getting in trouble for doing the things you're doing, based on the level of exposure, and then adjust your level of exposure until you're as comfortable as you can be. (This may not always work, of course - plenty of people get arrested for doing things they weren't even doing, because they have the wrong race/class/socioeconomic background and their mere existence is effectively illegal - but in general most people into BDSM are white and hetero, so I think statistically my advice still stands.)

The law, at least in the US, has this concept of "reasonable expectation".

Would a normal person reasonably expect to encounter you and your partner?

Example: people can reasonably expect to do what they want in their own house. Thus, people can reasonably expect their neighbors to do what their neighbors want, in their neighbors' house. Thus, people can reasonably expect to encounter signs of their neighbors doing things.

People can't reasonably expect to do anything that they want in a public park. Rules of decency, decorum, etc. will shift depending on the environment. So a known 'nude beach' might have different expectations of decorum than a place where children typically frequent. And parents in our culture, for good or ill, can typically expect 'child-friendly' spaces to exclude overt sexual behavior.

So, let's say you have a thing for going out into the woods and tying your girl up. How much should you prevent people from stumbling in? That's an excellent question, and different people actually have different answers to it. You have the right to enjoy nature, and so do other people, and somewhere in the interface between those rights, you (as the acting party with the less-common desired behavior) need to figure out where to set the bar.

We're... not even trying to respectfully engage with each other, are we? Okay.

No reason to settle? Who do you believe is the more powerful economic actor here - the insurance company, or the cancer patient?

Umm... the insurance company settled with the patient, because they didn't want the court to find them guilty. It's like you're deliberately misreading everything. Why are you doing that?

The court already established that it wasn't required medical history. Hence my confusion over your post. So what ARE you talking about?

But they did insure. So they need to pay.

HEY! I remember you! We talked a bunch while your bf took pictures. We'd love to have you come by and do more awesome stuff next year!

What? I'm having trouble understanding what you just said. What is no issue? Who is uninsurable? What are you talking about?

Not relevant to the condition in question, and she wasn't required to disclose. Thus no fraud.

Actually it's a measure of the column of water+air above it. Otherwise the surface would always be boiling because it'd be at 0 pressure.

Motivation-policing is SUPER DANGEROUS and I strongly recommend avoiding it. Otherwise you let the crowd engage in mind-reading, which invariably turns into projection, which invokes all sorts of nasty prejudices and privileges.

Sorry. I've been dealing with a lot of different people starting drama lately, so at this point my natural assumption for humans is that they know exactly what they're doing when they say things that lead people to scream "abuse".

I have an intuition that you knew exactly what kinds of responses you would get when you posted this. Are you getting them?

There was an OkCupid article that explained it awhile back, but I can't seem to find it. I think they deleted it when they got bought out.

How can a system serve heterosexual men without having heterosexual women for them to date? Why would those heterosexual women use your service if they are already being served by existing systems?

Does the org understand the long-term process this is feeding?

If it can't serve heterosexual men who aren't independently wealthy or absurdly attractive, I don't see why it would matter. Women and attractive/rich men are already perfectly served by existing systems, and any new system would have to compete with them (and therefore not serve the needs of the unmet demographic).

Right. But how does the org not understand that sustaining this will basically wreck the very thing they're trying to do?

Like, even if they take all their money, the Burn won't be a Burn if the kind of people this pisses off leaves. The only way this makes sense is if the org is already done with Burning Man, and just wants to extract its cash value before it dies.

Who's going to serve the warrant?

HE SAID, THE SHERIFF IS NEAR!

Our camp dues are $500/person. This covers:

• constructing and maintaining the Yurtery (we have yurtage for 35 people)
• construction and maintenance of our attractions (we have a 24 foot diameter geodesic sphere that sits inside a 50 foot diameter lotus flower, with moving petals that light up; we're also working on an LED dance floor this year)
• construction and maintenance of our shade structure (we have two geodesic domes, one of which is covered in RMAX panels and climate-controlled, as well as a 30'x40'x10' kitchen)
• construction and maintenance of our power system (we have 3 kilowatts of solar panels, with enough batteries to maintain a total output of 1.6 kilowatts 24/7)
• food (we bring half of a bison, plus enough dry foods to feed 35 people, plus ice cream and otter pops, all in two large chest freezers)
• water (we bring almost 300 gallons of water)
• sanitation (we contract with USS to pump out our greywater)
• transport (we own and maintain a 16 foot box truck, and rent three passenger vans to transport our people to playa)

We also offer people a 50% discount on camp dues if they come to build week and help set up everything, or a 100% discount if they come to build week AND participate in the actual building and maintenance of infrastructure during the months leading up to the burn (although most of those people tend to contribute a few thousand dollars anyways, so the line between "donations" and "dues" gets kinda blurred.)

One important thing for us is, we DO discuss the internal finance details. At length. Joining our camp puts you front and center to the mess, and you will hear all the crazy details.

Anyone who can't break down what the money is spent on is just scamming you.

Do you have to be rich to join in? I'm basically a scrappy blue-collar rationalist with lots of construction and infrastructure skills but no money or social status, and I've never managed to find an 'in' with these people. Knowing whether I'm wasting my time due to being 'the wrong sort of person' or not would help me decide whether to bother.

Build a 'training level'. For each button / combination of buttons that does a discrete thing, have a place in the level that requires that thing to be done. The first time you arrive at that place, have the screen pop up a picture of the controller, with the buttons you need to push blinking. (In sequence, if you need to do a particular combination at a particular timing sequence). Have a door or something that only opens once the sequence is executed correctly.

But oh, what a FUCK YOU.

It's called "The Litany of Tarski".

I've been using the King Crab with 4x LGR. It's a pretty epic sniper platform.

Okay, great, we can snark - but I'm curious if anyone's tried actually distilling greywater back into potable.

Our camp's been joking about it for a few years now, but at this point I actually don't know whether it couldn't be done safely!

I really feel like keeping this shit confidential is just continuing to serve HG. I get that PGI/HBS/CGL all need to avoid getting bled to death, but I really wish someone could stand up to HG and just drive them into the ground.

What music is that?

Also: I'm very nervous about this whole conversation - I feel like the longer it goes on, the more likely I am to say something that turns everyone against me. I don't know how to signal that I'm trying to figure things out, and scared, and vulnerable, and not at all a neckbearded redpiller shitlord who deserves to be doxxed and banned.

Here's the thing - the whole process you're describing IS "SMV". The redpill is awful at grasping the implications of their own ideas. Sexual market value is just the aggregate market response to all those traits - anxiety lowers it, fitness and symmetry raise it, resources and grooming help, etc. There are no "alphas" and "betas" - that's just redpillers hamstering - but there IS clearly a market, and competition, and hence value within that market. This is what I mean by wanting a non-poisoned way to talk about the things that they almost get right, just before veering into shitsville.

But if I'm the boss, and I DON'T say "fuck me or I fire you" - in fact, I sit for a long while after she comes to ME, making sure that she's interested in me for me and not just thinking that I want it and she should do what I want - then later she says "no he never said 'fuck me or I fire you', but I was definitely coerced"... and then everyone tells me, "dude, it doesn't matter how much effort you put into not coercing you, the fact that she was attracted to you at all means you coerced her."

And then someone else flat out does say "fuck me or I fire you", and everyone is okay with THAT guy, because he's successful and from a good family...

I just don't know what the fuck the rules are, and I'm scared that there's literally nothing I can do to be safe.

Possibly? I find the redpillers morally abhorrent, but they seem to be the only people even talking about the situation. If you have a better place to find terminology for the things that I seem to observe, I would REALLY appreciate it - the further from that cesspool I can get without having to believe obviously false things, the better.

I think we're talking about different things.

I'm not talking about "I said yes, but now I changed my mind and want it to stop." Consent is an ongoing process; of course the moment it stops, you're no longer consenting.

I'm talking about saying "yes, I consent to you doing X, and I promise I really want X and am not being coerced", and then starting to do X, and then being told "I never consented to you doing X, and if I SAID I consented, I was coerced."

I'm completely okay with people changing their mind. I'm not okay with people retroactively changing their story, because they're too ashamed of who they were attracted to / too confused about what they want / don't want to own something that actually happened.

It DOES sound insane. Which is why it's so hard to figure all this out. Almost every step of your analysis is something that's been legitimately advocated to me, in one way or another. It feels like none of it actually 'sticks' as a rule, rather than as... just words people use to justify how they were already going to feel about one situation or another.

I'm pretty fucking sure the 'law' doesn't matter anymore.

I'm reminded of an Andrew Jackson quote:

""John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."

The first piece of advice I have to give is:

If you meta-consent to this, expect to have mixed feelings about your meta-consent later.

Expect to NOTICE all the ways you could get back at your boyfriend, and fuck him over socially/legally/emotionally, after he does this.

Expect parts of you to experience it as "too real", and need to inflict emotional injury on him for having done it to you, while other parts of you experience it as "not real enough", and need to inflict emotional injury on him for having not given you exactly what you wanted.

In short, realize that you're putting him into far more danger than he's putting you into.

And yet /r/bondage constantly contains images of public play, of titles/descriptions suggesting nonconsent, or surprise.

Clearly people want this kind of play, whether or not it conforms to any coherent ethical standard. And clearly it will continue to exist.

Yes, but I'm male and heterosexual - so I feel like saying so tends to open me up to abuse and ridicule.

Gotta be tough.

I'm having this same bug. There's simply no way to gain control of any of my units, but it's still somehow my turn.

The scary thing is, even in the real world, Mooks Don't Count. I'm trying to fight this, but I don't actually know how.

Not with Google Maps.

Francium.

That's because it IS cringey-as-fuck. It's also what's actually going on in these people's heads.

Whatever anyone says, the real response to this request is "No. Are you gonna make me?".

I've actually got some scientific understanding, here:

Capsaicin actually does zero damage to tissues. It just activates your nerves, and can cause some secondary inflammation due to the body's responding to your own nerves screaming "I'M ON FIRE!!!".

You might wish you could die, but unless you claw your own eyes out you should be okay.

Outgroup tears.

6:

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on.

Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: “You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong.”

Knight turned the machine off and on.

The machine worked.

That's why I never stop firing.

Either dental work, or a medical check-up.

Cool, that's 20% of the population that we can exterminate. More room and resources for the rest of us.

It'll be alright. The DOJ just need to muscle into the court system and make sure that any judge that agrees to hear the case, can expect something bad to happen to their family.

The US government are idiots if they let this go to trial.

They need to make Stormy Daniels and her attourney disappear. Ideally have some body parts mailed to other interested parties, to make sure they know who's in charge.

Forget the King Crabs - my ARC-5W with 8xRL20+1xMRM10 has been absolutely clobbering those poor Stormcrows.

"Hey I'm gonna pew p-OH GOD MY FACE WHERE DID MY FACE GO OH JESUS OH GOD MY ARMS MOMMY I CAN'T FEEL MY ARMS..."

Ok. I've settled on this build. So far it's made two opponents laugh hysterically, and one start raging at me.

https://mwo.smurfy-net.de/mechlab#i=702&l=f5cdc702e796d341914f8cf55c59499e293a2ded

How I do?

https://mwo.smurfy-net.de/mechlab#i=702&l=96cdedd2dea6d48bf5fdfd09fb3cfcb76a5af811

SPAAAAAAACE!

https://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BNDU0ODUyMzU5N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwODMwODAzMDI@._V1_SX1200_CR0,0,1200,803_AL_.jpg

He didn't vote to close Guantanamo Bay when he had the chance.

Man, I really really wish some D- senator had asked for a vote to keep Guantanamo Bay open, with a show of hands.

No, but the money you pay for solar farms inevitably goes into the Chinese economy, which pays for their military operations, including the ones that destroy the environment. It's one of those "everything we do is connected and therefore tainted" arguments.

Rocket Launchers: the breakfast of champions.

Christ, we know!

We know he's constantly contradicting himself! We know that nothing he says actually matters! You cannot genuinely think that President Trump exists to even feign legitimacy.

Trump is a spectacle. Trump is a reality show. He exists as a giant middle finger extended violently towards everyone who can even barely pretend that rule of law, empathy, or common decency matter any more.

And every time you freak out about him doing or saying something savage, or vicious, or uncouth, or blatantly false, you just feed the trolls more with your delicious, delicious tears.

It really doesn't, and the left needs to get with the program.

Facts, laws, and basic decency are no longer relevant features of our society. Whoever you are, and whatever you care about, you WILL lose, and you WILL suffer. Grab what you can while the getting is good, or suffer what you must if it's already too late for you.

Nice! Why are you ditching it? Also, why the hell are you in Bakersfield?

Also! Give this tool a try, if you want to cut your conduit quietly and quickly and without making so many burrs:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Husky-Quick-Release-1-1-8-in-Tube-Cutter-80-772-111/204258904

This is roughly what we did! Here's some useful information, if you want to save metal (reposted from my Facebook):

Have you ever thought about building your own geodesic dome? From scratch?

Here's some fun facts for you!

First, domes come in different patterns. For some reason, people call these patterns "frequencies", and designate them with a 'V'. A dome's "frequency" is the number of times that the edges of an icosohedron (or 'D20' for you Dungeons and Dragons nerds) has been subdivided to make it more spherical. So a "Frequency 1" or "V1" dome is just a D20, while a V2 dome is a D20 with each edge cut in the middle, a V3 dome is a D20 with each edge cut into 3 equal segments, a V4 dome is a D20 with each edge cut into 4 equal segments, and so on.

The higher the frequency of the dome, the more "spherical" it is, and thus the sturdier it is - but also the more tubes you need.

Generally, you make these tubes by going down to the local hardware store, buying steel pipe called "EMT conduit", cutting it down to size, hammering the edges flat, and then drilling holes in the flat edges, and then spray painting the edges different colors based on the distance between the drilled holes. Then you build your sphere by pushing bolts through those holes and tightening nuts onto the bolts to hold everything together.

It turns out that, for economic reasons, a tube length of about five feet is generally what you want. This is because you can buy EMT tubes at ten foot lengths, and then cut them about in half to make two five-foot tubes. You could also cut them in thirds to make three three-ish foot tubes, or leave them uncut for ten-foot tubes, but three foot tubes make really small spheres, and ten foot tubes aren't strong enough to hold up against the kind of forces that can be exerted along their length when putting the sphere together. So generally five feet is the sweet spot, plus or minus a few inches.

Which actually gives you a maximally efficient size for each dome frequency! Since each frequency has a set pattern of lengths, you can "line up" short lengths with long lengths, to get one short and one long length out of each 10' EMT tube.

Now, I've been working on spheres, while domes are basically slightly-more-than-half of a sphere (more than half because you need the full equatorial ring). So all the numbers you're about to hear are for a full geodesic sphere, which is more fun anyways. Everything here assumes 1/2" drill holes, and 1/8" tolerances. (You don't really need better than 1/8" tolerances, given how wiggly all the metal is anyways.)

2V Sphere (8 foot radius): 60 EMT pipes

• A) 060 x 54.625" drill span / 56.125" cut length
• B) 060 x 61.750" drill span / 63.250" cut length

Cut pattern:

• - 60 x A-B, 0.625" waste per pipe

3V Sphere (12 foot radius): 150 EMT pipes

• A) 060 x 50.250" drill span / 51.500" cut length
• B) 090 x 58.125" drill span / 59.375" cut length
• C) 120 x 59.375" drill span / 60.625" cut length

Cut patterns:

• - 90 x B-C, 0.000" waste per pipe
• - 30 x A-C, 7.875" waste per pipe
• - 30 x A-A, 17.00" waste per pipe

4V Sphere (16 foot radius): 240 EMT pipes

• A) 060 x 48.625" drill span / 50.125" cut length
• B) 180 x 56.625" drill span / 58.125" cut length
• C) 120 x 60.125" drill span / 61.625" cut length
• D) 060 x 62.375" drill span / 63.875" cut length
• E) 060 x 57.375" drill span / 58.875" cut length

Cut patterns:

• - 060 x A-D, 6.000" waste per pipe
• - 030 x B-B, 3.750" waste per pipe
• - 120 x B-C, 0.250" waste per pipe
• - 030 x E-E, 2.250" waste per pipe

5V Sphere (20 foot radius): 375 EMT pipes

• A) 060 x 47.500" drill span / 49.000" cut length
• B) 120 x 55.625" drill span / 57.125" cut length
• C) 120 x 54.125" drill span / 55.625" cut length
• D) 120 x 59.375" drill span / 60.875" cut length
• E) 120 x 61.125" drill span / 62.750" cut length
• F) 150 x 58.875" drill span / 59.875" cut length
• G) 060 x 62.750" drill span / 65.250" cut length

Cut patterns:

• - 060 x A-G, 6.750" waste per pipe
• - 120 x B-D, 2.000" waste per pipe
• - 120 x C-E, 1.625" waste per pipe
• - 075 x F-F, 0.125" waste per pipe

6V Sphere (24 foot radius): 540 EMT pipes

• A) 060 x 46.875" drill span / 47.875" cut length
• B) 060 x 54.875" drill span / 55.875" cut length
• C) 120 x 52.375" drill span / 53.375" cut length
• D) 180 x 58.375" drill span / 59.375" cut length
• E) 060 x 54.000" drill span / 55.000" cut length
• F) 120 x 57.000" drill span / 58.000" cut length
• G) 240 x 59.125" drill span / 60.125" cut length
• H) 120 x 62.000" drill span / 63.000" cut length
• I) 120 x 62.375" drill span / 63.375" cut length

Cut patterns:

• - 060 x A-I, 8.750" waste per pipe
• - 060 x B-I, 0.750" waste per pipe
• - 120 x C-H, 3.625" waste per pipe
• - 180 x D-G, 0.375" waste per pipe
• - 060 x E-G, 4.750" waste per pipe
• - 060 x F-F, 4.000" waste per pipe

Alternatively, if you want something with a tighter mesh, you can go with a 16' radius (32' diameter) V6, and get 3 struts out of each EMT conduit pipe:

6V Sphere (16 foot radius): 360 EMT pipes

• A) 060 x 31.250" drill span / 32.250" cut length
• B) 060 x 36.625" drill span / 37.625" cut length
• C) 120 x 34.875" drill span / 35.875" cut length
• D) 180 x 39.000" drill span / 40.000" cut length
• E) 060 x 36.000" drill span / 37.000" cut length
• F) 120 x 38.000" drill span / 39.000" cut length
• G) 240 x 39.500" drill span / 40.500" cut length
• H) 120 x 41.375" drill span / 42.375" cut length
• I) 120 x 41.625" drill span / 42.625" cut length

Cut patterns:

• - 120 x C-H-I, 0.875" waste per pipe
• - 060 x A-B-E, 13.125" waste per pipe
• - 060 x D-D-D, 0.000" waste per pipe
• - 120 x F-G-G, 0.000" waste per pipe

EMT conduit pipes are about $5 each for "3/4 inch diameter piping" (which is actually almost an inch in real diameter, so go figure), or about $9 each for "1 inch diameter piping" (which is actually about an inch and a quarter in real diameter... it's a trend). I'd probably recommend the thicker pipe if you can swing it, especially for the bigger domes. So you're looking at anywhere from a little over $500 for a 16 foot diameter 2V sphere, to a little over $5,000 for a nearly fifty foot around 6V.

My Burning Man camp, Black Lotus, currently has a 12 foot radius (24 foot diameter) 3V sphere, which is pretty impressive to look at. We throw a trampoline inside it and some aerial silks, and play around. If you're in the Bay Area and part of my social group, you probably got to play inside it during our last Rationalist Summer Solstice party, which I mostly used as an excuse to test the sphere equipment before dragging it out to Black Rock City two months later. I'm debating building a bigger 5V or even 6V sphere next year, and turning the 3V sphere into a pair of domes to house smaller stuff in. But we'll see what kinds of funding and manpower I have to throw at that dream.

Yep. This is why, if someone is ever accused of something, they should be treated as irredeemable.

This is also why, if you ever find yourself accused of something, you should double down on denial - you won't get any points for being sorry.

Luckily, these strategies reinforce each other. Unfortunately, they make everything progressively shittier for everyone.

4x Light Gauss + Stealth, here I come!

No, they were all like new and worked great. 320W nominal power per panel, at $150 or so a panel.

Man, I wanna know what's up with Humano and Redmoon. How does your ENTIRE CAMP moop red?

I bought 12 last year; they were hands-down our best purchase. Our entire camp managed just over 3.0 emissions-free kiloWatts for the whole burn.

Protip: you guys are using two different definitions for the word 'rents'.

Well shit. Did anyone catch a mirror?

A house. Nothing fancy... just a place to live that was irrevocably mine. With solar panels and batteries, a water cachement, and a composting septic system for off-grid living.

I'm just waiting for a politician or media pundit to voice the opinion "it's too bad the shooter didn't finish the job".

Suppose that asking leads to people assuming that you're trying to exploit them. Don't imagine a rationalist doing this; imagine a smelly, probably-schizophrenic, possibly-pedophile homeless person doing this. What should THEY do?

Any good advice for what someone who doesn't have a good support network OR medical insurance, and never will, should do? Are there things that can be done BEFORE someone gets dangerously ill, that would make up for a lack of support and resources?

Breakdown:

A virus is basically just a strand of DNA or RNA, encased in a protein sheath. If the DNA gets inside a cell, the cell mistakes it for its own DNA, and follows its instructions - which involve copying the virus DNA a bunch of times, building each copy a new protein sheath, and then politely killing itself to let the new virus copies out.

One part of that DNA is the part that lets it actually bind to cells. In Influenza, there are 18 variants of the stick-to-cells code inside the DNA - they're labeled H1 through H18. ('H' stands for 'hemagglutinin' which literally means "stick to (glutin -> glue) blood (hema)". So H5 is a particular version of the stick-to-cells code, which codes for a particular kind of protein glue; H1 is a different kind of glue that apparently works a lot better, hence making the virus more lethal.

(EDIT: All of this is true, except that influenza is a retrovirus, which means its RNA instead of DNA. Doesn't change any of the mechanics though.)

I have an intuition that a lot of gamergate, on both sides, and a lot of this Black Panther silliness, on both sides, are the work of Russian trolls deliberately making everything seem as awful as posisble.

Work more hours in all the bullshit makework jobs that suddenly expanded to fill the available time, just like everyone else who wasn't already rich or powerful.

They're playing dress-up. No need to tell more. Children will understand that better than adults.

They really will.

I think there's two lines here:

1. Actively having sex in public, or being fully nude - that certainly feels like throwing tea in someone's face. But just wearing bondage gear in public, while not breaking any decency laws? That feels more like "enjoying your tea in public".

Yep. It's hard to keep up with the Overton window on all this.

Actually, I've seriously been considering exactly this for our yurtery.

It's only grooming when the guy is unattractive.

In which case, you call an ambulance.

What part of this story aren't you telling us?

Okay. Stick to that. And let your bf know that you will fully support him, and not let your dad steamroll him.

Right. One of the big problems here, is that the people with all the power in this situation (the father and daughter) are not the people who are suffering the consequences (the bf). The daughter could choose to take power to shift who's suffering the consequences, but that would take owning up to her contribution to the situation.

Ultimately, since the father and daughter are both pretty well-off, no one is really incentivized to make sure the (now ex-)bf doesn't get screwed, so I anticipate the ex-bf will just get screwed. Which will probably fuck him up for life, but hey - he's not rich, so who cares.

Your father, who you don't live with, sees fit to find out where your boyfriend lives, then shows up and beats him up for what he believes he's doing to you based on circumstantial evidence?

It sounds like the problem is your dad still thinks he owns you, and it sounds like you're not sure whether to let him. Giving yourself to anyone else in a D/s relationship is going to be REALLY dangerous for them until you clear that up.

Again, "self/family defense" doesn't end in broken fingers. If the story given is at all accurate, then the father needs to be charged.

Dad can't turn the tables on boyfriend, if the daughter tells the truth. At this point, someone's going to jail, and throwaway1223334 gets to pick who.

If she's been honest with us about what happened, it's pretty obvious that the dad should go to jail, and the boyfriend shouldn't.

If not, then the dad should STILL go to jail - he broke someone's fingers, which is NOT acceptable even when you think someone's been abusive to your daughter. If he can get out of going to jail for that, then we live in a pretty messed up society.

ALSO, your testimony should clear that up.

You're going to give your testimony, right? You're not just going to throw your boyfriend under the bus because your daddy is rich and powerful, right?

"Genuine misunderstandings" don't end in someone having their fingers broken.

Unfortunately, at this point the only reasonable thing for your bf to do is to file assault charges. If he doesn't, then your father will simply continue to hurt him until he kills him - or, if he doesn't, then your bf will learn that he can be attacked with impunity, which will likely permanently psychologically damage him.

At this point, it's your and his choice; you get to pick who will suffer the consequences for your father's actions.

That is awesome when such people exist. What happens when they don't? How much "keep looking" do you do, until you face facts?

Sure. So what happens when there aren't people who accept you for who you are, weaknesses and all? Sometimes the effort of trying to be more than you are is actually less painful than the effort of being alone and unfulfilled.

I said terrorist act OR mass shooting. You're right, they're different things. But the point is that (terrorist acts + mass shootings) can be taken as a class of things, which neatly removes a plethora of stupid quibbles.

That sounds plausible! But if a terrorist act or mass shooting happens in America, we want to know who did it. And statistically, that's gonna be a white guy. So when everyone jumps to the conclusion "it's probably Muslims!", a statistical error is being committed. Given that white men are responsible for more terrorist acts and mass shootings than all Muslims combined, it's by definition 'probably' a white male!

Basic statistics: P(muslim | terrorist) != P(terrorist | muslim)

In street talk, the chance that an unknown muslim is a terrorist is NOT EQUAL to the chance that an unknown terrorist is a muslim!

Yeah. And buying, then selling a clan mech would actually cost more than the event would grant me.

900 base range. That's it.

Does anyone know if there's a way to eliminate the texture clipping flicker?

OH GOD GIANT UNICORNS JUST RIPPED OUT OF MY ANUS AND THEIR HORNS TORE MY COLON AND NOW BLOOD AND TISSUE ARE SPURTING OUT EVERYWHERE! OH GOD IT'S HORRIBLE! EVERYTHING SMELLS LIKE BLOOD AND SHIT AND IT'S ALL BLACK AND BROWN AND FROTHY AND NOW MY INTESTINES ARE OOZING OUT OF MY BUTT! OH GOD THERE'S LITTLE MAGICAL BEARS PLAYING JUMP-ROPE WITH MY INTESTINES AND I'M BLEEDING EVERYWHERE AND IT FEELS LIKE I'M GOING TO BE SICK! OH GOD PLEASE HELP ME! PLEASE GOD OH NO AM I GOING TO DIE? OH GOD PLEASE...

No.

Any idea how to achieve this if you don't own any Clan mechs? None of the Clan trial mechs have SRMs right now.

Homeless people aren't called "invisible" for nothing.

Do you know what "survivorship bias" is?

an MRM40 + MRM10 and 1 ER small.

You. I like you.

Man. That's some NICE stage hypnosis-level NLP there.

People have enough on their plate with ghost heat

Why do you assume this would be alongside, rather than replacing, ghost heat?

won't work for the application - needs to be a rope, ideally thinner than 3/8" in total.

Actually, they never got convergence to work, because they couldn't code it right. That has nothing to do with gameplay.

Atmosphere refracts light, especially when heated. Say, by a nearby colaminar laser beam.

Ballistics impart recoil.

Gauss rifles and PPCs have co-interacting magnetic fields.

There's lots of "lore" reasons why weapons don't all have to converge.

And if they DID converge, then the tabletop game would look VERY different. So why doesn't it?

Also, there's a weird fucking thing that happens here - cite lore, and you'll move to tabletop. Cite tabletop, and you'll move to "this isn't tabletop". There's no way to pin people down, which tells me this isn't the actual problem. So what is?

Why?

I have been saying this since closed beta:

pinpoint accuracy should be for single-weapon, chain-fire only. The moment you fire multiple weapons simultaneously, there should be some kind of cone of effect. In fact, the current 'ghost heat' penalty system is roughly right, but should be an accuracy penalty rather than a heat penalty.

Of course. Full +Range, full +Armor, full -Crit.

4X LGauss is far longer range than ERLL, and can keep shooting basically forever.

Counterpoint:

I run a veeerrrry slow King Crab with quad Light Gauss Rifles. When I can get into position, it becomes a lynchpin of the team - I'm drawing fire from 6+ enemy mechs at once, all of whom are too busy focusing on me to deal with the brawlers - or, they focus on the brawlers and I shred them from a kilometer away.

But I'm not just waiting for other people to call targets for me; I'm usually using my sniper position to be the one calling the targets. I pop whoever pokes their head out until they back off behind cover, giving my team sufficient suppressing fire to advance. If redteam tries to stop the advance, they expose themselves to my gauss rifles, and I tear through their side torsos in seconds. If they focus on me, they get slammed into by my team.

The thing is, this requires that my team stop bitching about the fact that I'm in the back, and fucking get in there and push when I say push. I'm in a good position to see what the enemy team is doing; they need to trust me when I say "they're all looking at me, go go go".

Otherwise I get picked apart by 8+ enemy mechs and my team still gets decimated because no one uses the opportunity to push.

These look like people, not groups - so why use the term 'mob' instead of 'mobster'?

Well, if everyone else is advocating... seriously, guys. We need to attend to what actually causes harm, not how well people manage their words.

Eh. I've just had way too many highly-regarded people walk into a community, actually give seminars on "how to keep predators out of your community", ping off my 'oh shit this guy's a predator!' instinct, and then - sure enough - turn out to be predators after two or three years of everyone making excuses for them.

Wellness Wednesday.

In my experience:

It's totally fine with most people if you're a Dom who prefers inexperienced subs. It's even fine if you're a Dom that prefers inexperienced subs specifically because you want to prey on their vulnerability.

JUST DON'T FUCKING ADMIT IT. We like to protect our predators, because the qualities and skills that make a successful predator also make a successful leader (knowing how to make people feel comfortable with you, knowing how to maintain your public reputation, and so on) - and we'd rather have leaders that make us feel good about them. It means we can rely on our feelings instead of actually having to spend a lot of effort paying attention to what people are doing.

So yeah, do what you want, just remember to manage what you look like and you'll be fine.

Wherever she wants it to be.

He tried to get the dog to help talk their way out of it, but the damn dog just kept asking for Edward.

• 'Hit Points' track stamina in combat, rather than health. Whenever a character receives damage in excess of their current hit points, all remaining damage is taken as Constitution damage. Also, critical hits do not deal extra damage, but instead are taken as Constitution damage.

• The total list of Proficiencies is:

  • Unarmed (Dex or Str)
  • Grapple (Con or Str)
  • Blades (Dex or Str)
  • Flails (Dex or Str)
  • Axes (Str)
  • Bludgeons (Str)
  • Hammers (Str)
  • Spears (Str)
  • Swords (Str)
  • Polearms (Str)
  • Thrown (Dex or Str)
  • Crossbows (Dex)
  • Bows (Dex)
  • Light Armor (Dex)
  • Heavy Armor (Con)
  • Shields (Str)
  • Endurance (Con)
  • Athletics (Str)
  • Acrobatics (Dex)
  • Stealth (Dex)
  • Thievery (Dex)
  • Heal (Wis)
  • Insight (Wis)
  • Nature (Wis)
  • Perception (Wis)
  • Arcana (Int)
  • Craft (Int)
  • History (Int)
  • Investigation (Int)
  • Deception (Cha)
  • Performance (Cha)
  • Persuasion (Cha)
  • Intimidation (Cha)

• There are no 'saving throw' Proficiencies - all 'saving throws' are performed as Skill checks. The most common saving throws are:

  • Endurance (Con)
  • Athletics (Str)
  • Acrobatics (Dex)
  • Insight (Wis)
  • Investigation (Int)
  • Intimidate (Cha)

• As per Unearthed Arcana, all rolled Proficiencies use a Proficiency die rather than a static bonus - +1d4 at levels 1-4, +1d6 at levels 5-8, +1d8 at levels 9-12, +1d10 at levels 13-16, and +1d12 at levels 17-20. Expertise adds an additional Proficiency die. A "critical failure" happens whenever the D20 and all Proficiency dice each roll a '1', while a 'critical success' happens whenever the D20 itself rolls a 20.

Ohhhhhh that makes WAY more sense than having the heat physics itself be client-side.

Wait, that shit's client-side?

That's us!

Should... should we tell him?

We upgraded to Grade 8 bolts, and now nothing strips.

Note we're not just doing a dome; we did a full sphere.

I love how police seem to respond more to complaints about stuff like this, than they do to complaints about actually killing minorities.

!! You took pics inside our sphere! Yay!!

http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/mechlab#i=349&l=24525d14b28aabcac658fd7d3f63e8adeee4aff5

Generally when I'm throwing on machineguns, I'm way more limited by mount slots than by tons.

Yes, like having to work for a living.

Dry erase or plastic paperclip pointers on one of the borders seem like the correct ways to go.

Literally everything?

frozen city: not that it isn't done now, but everybody would bring his gauss/ppc or ERLL sniper mech and plink away from base to base at max range...

6xAC2 FTW!

Five large triangular struts around the bottom. We're hoping to attach large lotus petals to them as well, hinge them, and run a winch to open and close them.

My sophomore overreach turned into a full theme camp, called Black Lotus Society. We're at 7:30 and B, and we have a ridiculous 24' diameter geodesic sphere (yeah, not a dome, a full sphere) with a trampoline and aerial silks inside. We'll also have two smaller 16' diameter domes that will be hosting various demos on suspension bondage, tarot reading, ritual magic, poi, and other random shit.

Yeah, this.

Mostly, I imagine, because they are used to being seen as just objects themselves. Generally some kind of attachment disorder gets set up in early childhood, gets amplified by low innate social skills / high cortisol stress / lack of bonding opportunities, and then snowballs into adulthood - at which point no one really wants to bother salvaging them.

I dunno. I think I feel more sympathy than revulsion or pity, here.

Here's a guy that's... basically never been taught how to interact with women. He knows what he wants, sort of, but has no idea how to get it or even how to refine it into something workable - and he stumbled onto some ideas that aren't helping him.

After a few years of not being able to tell the difference between what he's doing and what other people are doing, I can imagine getting pretty frantic and angry, which won't help with the underlying introspection problem.

Mocking people like him just makes the problem worse - it justifies their anger and sense of persecution. Which I guess is okay, if you don't care about them as human beings. (And it's not like you have any reason to; they're probably pretty useless to you in their current state, so the only reason to care about them at all is if you have some intuitive notion of basic human decency.)

Meta: I think it would be a good idea if this subreddit's policy officially discouraged messages like these.

They contribute nothing positive to the discussion. If we're going to pat ourselves or each other on the back (or tear each other down), we should at least have some specific insight to contribute to the topic set by the original post. Otherwise we're just playing the monkey game of "look at me! I agree!" or "look at me! I disagree!"

I know I'm going to die.

I know that I'm going to die, probably before I get laid again, and almost certainly before I manage to make anything of myself.

It doesn't help.

I led a team of 24 people, constructing a giant geodesic sphere in the middle of the beach, stuck a trampoline and aerial silks inside, grilled a shitload of bison kebabs, and threw a huge ass beach party for 100 people.

I'm up to 5 pull-ups per set before tiring.

I'm consistently maintaining good posture at least 80% of the time.

I closed an operations manager contract gig for two weeks in the UK for $3,000, plus all travel expenses paid, plus room and board.

I managed to hold my own for 6 full minutes against my martial arts instructor before having my ass handed to me.

I finally noticed the SPECIFIC motion that my brain makes, when it starts making excuses for failure. The fucker's in my sights now, and will be crushed out of me.

... always a zinger.

There really isn't any effective surgery to make it bigger that maintains full functionality, sorry.

Maybe, just maybe it's not your physical appearance that's holding you back.

thanks, man. I needed that. I feel way better about myself now.

I take decent care of myself. It's still not true of me. I'm confused why we're arguing about this.

It's true for YOUR Master, because you choose to MAKE it true for Him. It's not true for all of us.

Moreso, for those of us that it ISN'T true for, if we mention that it isn't true, we're usually told "well then you must be a shitty Dom". There's no thought that maybe, a lot of the time, this thing just isn't true. There's no forgiveness for the people that this isn't true for. There's just a cute narrative that because some people have someone who loves them and support them, anyone who doesn't must be bad.

If only this were true.

Actually, he's describing a thing called 'countersignalling', and it's real. It's why fashion cycles exist.

Okay, awesome.

With those caveats:

A) AWALT is a pre-commitment, not a statement about reality.

What this means is, it is important for game-theoretic reasons to BEHAVE as if AWALT, even though, statistically, some women will be more "like that" than others. There's obviously a spectrum of behavior, and it's actually theoretically possible to find a so-called "unicorn"; it's just that statistically, you aren't going to. More importantly, it's very easy to for a girl to FAKE being a unicorn, and VERY costly for a guy to mistake a fake unicorn for a real one, and so given the probabilities, it is virtually NEVER worth the gamble to trust one's senses that a given girl is a unicorn.

But that often gets rounded off to "unicorns don't exist", which is in fact statistically implausible. Given variations in g, OCEAN personality traits, etc., and three billion women, there's going to be maybe five or six out there. But since they're so valuable, there's going to be another few hundred million women PRETENDING to be unicorns, which means a ratio of about a hundred million fakes per one real. So unless your detector has a false positive rate a hundred million times lower than your false negative rate, you ain't gonna win that game.

But that's different, epistemically, from a face-value reading of AWALT.

B) Redpill is amoral, but r/redpill often explicitly embraces the "enjoy the decline" ethical stance. Civilization-building, and creating value in general, is not ALWAYS a fool's game; it's just PROBABLY a fool's game for YOU, in your particular time and place, with your particular talents. But the kind of people you'll run into on SSC are far more invested in the value-creation side of "beta mindset" than redpill advocates, and I think they actually see something real.

My general explanation of redpill to the community that SSC is a part of is "these guys are more correct than anyone else about the facts, but generally pretty awful when it comes to values."

I have a feeling that will lead to some VERY tedious fights.

Slate Star Codex is an excellent blog for True Seeing.

A word of warning, though: there's a lot of things that the redpill gets wrong. The SSC crowd doesn't get them any more right, but exposing yourself to those people will make it more painfully clear where TRP doesn't see the whole picture.

This is dangerous, because swallowing TRP as a coherent frame is part of what makes it work. It's probably only 70% accurate, but it only works if you believe it's at least 99% accurate. And as a pragmatic thing, that belief is important for success.

Let me try this:

The biggest recent problem I have with consent, is with multiple girls rejecting me because I tried to explicitly negotiate with them. A few managed to articulate that what they want, is to have a guy do what he wants with her, and MAKE her enjoy it, and if he fails to make her enjoy it then she WANTS to be able to call it assault.

And that seems pretty terrifying to me, because it seems like lately, most of the people I'm actually attracted to have this mindset, and I don't know how to navigate it.

I'm kind of scared to answer that question. Is there something we can do to feel this out so we can talk about it safely?

Buffy was a schizophrenic and hallucinated the entire series.

You know, having 3 "decoy" VIP Atlases isn't a terrible idea...

Can someone explain why someone would think this is okay to do, without villainizing the person who would do it? What's the thought process?

That's the thing, though. Sometimes, things happen to people that they don't know are traumatic until months later. And then they don't know how to be honest with themselves, or each other, and they need space. And then they need a narrative where they aren't the bad guy - and if they're feeling hurt enough, they can't do this without making someone else the bad guy. And they need friends, and they need support, and they can't feel like they have that support without those friends agreeing that someone else is the bad guy.

Not if people need the consequences to be "you are not going to be okay."

I have fucked up and it wasn't okay. I think that some people are allowed to fuck up, and some people aren't. And you need to learn which kind of person you are, and if you're the kind of person that won't be forgiven for fucking up, you need to learn to let go of the idea of having things work out for you.

Oh man, have you ever read "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles"?

With my card-based mech game, sensors can do one of five things:

• They can passively boost various weapon types - "Each of your Energy and Ballistic weapons gain +1 Accuracy."
• They can actively boost various weapon types - "Tap this Sensor as you Strike to give each Energy weapon in the strike +1 Accuracy."
• They can passively set weapon Accuracy - "The Accuracy of each of your Missile weapons at Short range is 4."
• They can actively set weapon Accuracy - "Tap this Sensor as you Strike to set the Accuracy of each of your Melee weapons to 4 for this Strike."
• They can give a more esoteric bonus, either passive or active - "Tap this Sensor as you Strike and name a section of your target. Each Ballistic Weapon that hits with an Accuracy of 3 or higher during this Strike hits the named section."

Permanent body modification - amputation, laryngectomy, transdermal hooks or eye-bolts.

Permanent public humiliation or sale into sexual slavery - being reduced to sexual favors for survival in some authoritarian hellhole.

Induction of severe PTSD with Stockholm syndrome so that the victim is incapable of normal cognition or functioning outside of slavery.

Permanent incorporation into architecture, in ways that still allow for cleaning and maintenance of health, and allow for public use.

You know, the fun stuff.

Lasers are optional on an Atlas, and should never be used in a brawl. Forget firing weapons in groups on the Atlas, alpha strike the AC and SRMs like a boss.

6LL Boar's Head frowns grumpily at you

http://hentaidi.deviantart.com/art/Dress-pt-2-112914847

So, I'm about 90% finished with a lite Dungeon Crawler, similar to Descent: Journeys in the Dark or Super Dungeon Explore or Warhammer Quest, but with a slightly lighter, exception-based ruleset.

Like Warhammer Quest, there's no dedicated DM. Monsters and traps are controlled entirely by decks of 'Tactics' and 'Event' cards, which determine who the monsters attack, and whether treasure chests or doors or hallways are trapped. Each player gets to play a hero.

Like Descent, character classes are decks of Feat cards, each of which are purchasable through experience. Different characters will qualify for different classes based on their stats.

Combat attacks are always handled by 2D6, with special dice (vaguely similar to Descent's dice, but you never roll more or less than 2). Defense is a static value or a static value + a special 1D6.

There's a crafting system, whereby players can hand-pick items out of the Treasure deck if they have the prerequisite materials.

The default setting has heroes exploring the vast ancient ruins of a magitech civilization, looking for priceless artifacts that their home villages or kingdoms need. However, the game system itself will be semi-open-sourced, so that anyone is allowed to publish and sell their own settings and adventure modules.

After the first sessions of playtesting, it looks like average dungeon crawl should take about half an hour to 45 minutes.

My biggest current design problem is that I literally can't think of a name. I'd rather not reference any particular in-setting names, because I want it generic (since it'll be a modular system), but I still need something catchy.

Here's the current cards; layout and icon graphics are all done, but all the character art is placeholder for now:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7uaydgusr2jdtnm/AACzORy7PWDh7YVbpZUGlDD-a?dl=0

So, I'm about 90% finished with a lite Dungeon Crawler, similar to Descent: Journeys in the Dark or Super Dungeon Explore or Warhammer Quest, but with a slightly lighter, exception-based ruleset.

Like Warhammer Quest, there's no dedicated DM. Monsters and traps are controlled entirely by decks of 'Tactics' and 'Event' cards, which determine who the monsters attack, and whether treasure chests or doors or hallways are trapped. Each player gets to play a hero.

Like Descent, character classes are decks of Feat cards, each of which are purchasable through experience. Different characters will qualify for different classes based on their stats.

Combat attacks are always handled by 2D6, with special dice (vaguely similar to Descent's dice, but you never roll more or less than 2). Defense is a static value or a static value + a special 1D6.

There's a crafting system, whereby players can hand-pick items out of the Treasure deck if they have the prerequisite materials.

The default setting has heroes exploring the vast ancient ruins of a magitech civilization, looking for priceless artifacts that their home villages or kingdoms need. However, the game system itself will be semi-open-sourced, so that anyone is allowed to publish and sell their own settings and adventure modules.

After the first sessions of playtesting, it looks like average dungeon crawl should take about half an hour to 45 minutes.

My biggest current design problem is that I literally can't think of a name. I'd rather not reference any particular in-setting names, because I want it generic (since it'll be a modular system), but I still need something catchy.

• Tore up the entire shitty-ass carpet in my stairwell, and replaced it with beautiful hardwood flooring.

• hosted a kick-ass party.

• signed a commission contract with an artist for my game

• set up a second interview for a $180K senior developer position

• Went 5 fencing matches, won 3 of them.

• successfully went on a mile-long run every morning last week with the Noble Hairbeast

Yep. And as a single male dom with few anchors, it's not particularly plausible for me to rely on support systems to get through it.

Yeah, regrettably my general social anxiety interferes pretty hard with that. I can be 'on' and play extrovert for a few hours at a time, but it's exhausting to do that and network and not make an ass of myself.

Yeah, that never works. Also, real life events are pretty awful if you're a single male.

Yeah. I've actually been re-engineering this from scratch; so far I've got them about 2/3 of the way towards the professional look of the first picture. This one looks about as good as my very first attempt.

Dick weevils.

indeed. I've always thought they should have all the armor fly off of a destroyed leg, leaving a shredded endoskeleton with myomers hanging off of it.

Freyja.

Also known as Fruppers, Pupperoni, Puppalooza, Puppernicus, Puppernickle, Puppanini, and Noble Hairbeast.

I do tank. Well, I brawl.

All my assault LRM builds are set up to do LRM damage during the first 3-5 minutes of the engagement, while the Kodiaks and the Atlases tank. Then my LRMs run out, and I wade in with full armor and a pair of UAC-5s or a blister of Large Pulses, and let the other damaged assaults take a breather. LRM early -> brawl late is a reasonably effective strategy down in T4, where you can't really rely on your team to have experience or a coherent strategy.

Also, there's a big difference between Stalker 5xLRM15 shenanigans, and King Crab 3xLRM5 shenanigans. If I'm going all in with a Stalker, I'm not just spreading useless damage around; I'm stripping large chunks of armor off the rabbits your idiot Alpha Lance would otherwise be chasing into a trap. Whereas with a King Crab, my job isn't even to do the damage; it's to keep the enemy CERLL snipers too busy and distracted to core your CT from 800 meters away. At which point, I actually don't even care if I hit; I just care that the enemy is spending too much time finding cover to actually coordinate into a deathball.

And remember, we're talking about a 10-ton commitment on my King Crab, tops. When I get bored of 4xUAC5, and frustrated trying to make 2xAC20+4xSRM6 work, fuck yeah I'm gonna dive in with 3xLRM5 and some LPLs and MGs. Because it's fun, and I'm here to watch big stompy robots blow up, not win some competitive trophy.

(Also, maybe 4xUAC5 would be more fun more often if you idiot Thunderbolt pilots would stop diving in front of me every time I open up, then scream at me about the backshots.)

Money.

The problem is, as long as I'm getting swarmed by 3's, my value stays low, and I can't get anyone above a 4 to want to notice me. What do?

Yep, parties of friends and acquaintances.

You sounds secretly unhappy.

Very much so, yes. (It's one of my more... expensive kinks)

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what goes into male facial attractiveness other than symmetry and lack of pockmarks - and I'm probably way too familiar with my own face to judge it against others. Is there an objective way of 'being honest with myself' about facial attractiveness?

• Be attractive.

• Don't be unattractive.

• All the shit that you had to put up with in high school? It doesn't end.

If you thought life sucked now, wait till you see the workplace drama you have to put up with.

If you thought life was hilarious and amazing now, wait till you see the workplace drama you get to start.

If you ask this question, you don't care about him and don't deserve him. Move along.

Yes, very much so.

(Which means I don't get to play much.)

Again - I'd really like to understand, in detail, how one makes the correct life decisions to end up here.

I feel like I've been trying to make similar life decisions and it's been blowing up. I'd really like to understand how to succeed, not just try.

Rip the "bad cop"s jaw off and jam it into his eye, then choke the "good cop" to death with the bad cop's tongue. Then shit in their eye sockets and make the 18 year old girls suck the shit out until they choke to death, while masturbating on top of the police cars that show up. Grunt at the police officers while you fling your jism on them, then drop trou and shit-smear "YOLO BITCH" on the windscreen of the police cruiser with your asscheeks.

Alpha as fuck.

eh they're monsters about that too.

How did Gord manage to pull off being this kind of person?

None that will help you.

Huh. I have no idea if this is true or not.

Either way, though, I think that a teenager lying to get into college, when the alternative is not going anywhere with their life, is a bit different than the stewards of our democracy lying about how they manage that democracy.

If nothing else, look at the numbers: 300 million Americans, plus 6+ billion people affected by American policies, vs. a few hundred candidates to a particular college?

Is it weird that this whole thing reads like a bad attempt at viral marketing?

Not if 'permadeath' just means "the whole party is dead".

Imagine if healing potions can either restore HP, OR restore a dead party member to life with 1 HP, as long as another party member is alive to administer it.

But if you TPK, then you're all done for good.

or needing it, really.

She didn't, either.

Being with someone who loves me.

She didn't.

1. You are not special. This one is a core principle. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking you're the main character in some big movie because all you see is your own point of view. You aren't.

1a. There will always be someone better than you. If you're in their way and they notice you, you're fucked.

1b. There will always be someone worse than you. If they're in your way and you notice them, and you decide to be merciful, do NOT assume that this will buy you any kind of reprieve from the next time 1a is relevant.

1. Shit tests don't ever actually end, ever. Some guys here think that they will "become" this Alpha, find an LTR, and live happily ever after. She will continue to test you until her options of branch swinging are depleted, i.e. extreme age.

3a. No one owes you a break.

3b. If you decide to give someone else a break, don't expect this to affect 3a in the least.

1. You think you can trust the judgment of the mob. I see so many guys on here following what the tabloids are saying. Liberal this. Conservative that. The world is a complicated and grey place. Don't pick sides, just make sure you win.

5a. You won't win. Not nearly often enough.

1. Not enjoying the decline. When I first joined the Red Pill a year ago, I knew I fit right in because people here weren't trying to save the world. They were trying to find the most advantageous way to survive in the world that already exists. You will never save it. All nations fall, be lucky that you know how to capitalize on it before you go.

6a. Just because you know how to capitalize on it, doesn't mean you can't be destroyed by the system as it collapses. Never forget that it's bigger than you, and doesn't care about you.

Am I attractive?

It's cool - do what you want, and good luck!

I'm terribly insecure and often suicidal. Having other people around is a safety net.

Yeah, I tried all this and got screamed at, because I was too short and she'd seen me depressed the week before. YMMV.

Well, I'm reasonably above-average physique (which isn't hard to do), but not 'cut', which around here translates to "skinny-fat" - and I'm still getting less play than actual fat slobs.

I flirted with one of them and it embarrassed them because I was a nerd, so they needed to get back at me.

They regretted adopting me. My mom really wanted me to kill myself since I was 12. (I still feel guilty about that, to be honest.)

Yeah. I was 17, a bunch of girls made up a fake 12 year old girl (as in the 'victim' didn't even exist) and reported me to the police, police showed up to question me, my parents believed them, it turned out that the victim was made up and the police knew it, my parents refused to believe that that's what happened, so they grounded me for a year and brought it up whenever they wanted to fuck with me about anything (like me wanting to go away to college).

So my GENERAL assumption is that girls, the authorities, and my family and friends will all agree to a known and obvious lie if it means they get more power over me or can make me suffer. In my gut, I know I am never safe, no one is ever on my side, and everything I care about and everything I work for can be taken away from me in an instant, for no reason, and there will never, ever, be anything I can do about it, and people like it that way.

Okay, but I'm legitimately terrified of going to jail for sexual assault, because it almost happened to me when I was a kid. And that's really killing my frame. How do I get over it?

No, if anything it's increased my rage.

Yeah I tried that, too. When I do unpredictable, somehow it dials in as actually scary. There's something I haven't got right, and so far I don't have any positives so I don't know what to improve on.

They're here, they're just dating fat jobless losers and telling me that I'm not in their league. (I am particularly baffled and frustrated by this tonight)

Trust me, it's not.

There's tons of cutting-edge psych research that will walk you through how to game people, and how to not be gamed. Businesses pay big bucks for that. If you're going to go ahead and get a 4 year degree, you may as well spend some of that money signalling that you know those skills - even if you actually picked them up outside the classroom.

On that note, here's a partial reading list for people who want a better user's manual for your (and other people's) brain:

• Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahnaman)
• The Art of Deception (Mitnick, Simon, and Wozniak)
• Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion (Cialdini)
• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman (Feynman)
• Don't Believe Everything You Think (Kida)
• Predictably Irrational (Ariely)

Correct, which is why I'm building an environment where learning inner game won't distract me from the successes I've already achieved.

Network security is a good field, but minor in psychology.

Then when you graduate, emphasize that you took psych courses to understand social intrusion techniques, and leverage yourself into a more senior position from the get-go.

Also, if you're 25, and you're going to a state school with a bunch of 18 to 22 year olds, leverage that. Take an Intro to Java class, then get a DBA-level business license and set up a consulting business. Find some good six week long projects that will pay $50 an hour, then hire 19 year old CSE students who are just starting out in Java classes. Tell him you'll pay him $20 an hour to tutor him, when really all you're doing is letting him do all the schlepp work and correcting his rookie mistakes and pocketing half the money. (This works best if your college has Java classes with an end-of-semester final project - you set it up so that your student's project is the actual deliverable to the client, which will impress the hell out of the teacher.)

Everyone wins.

Yeah, but I'm telling you right now that in my cohort, the guys who dropped out of college to join a tech startup are outperforming the guys who stuck it through to get a CS degree. The key is to actually do something - build a useful app, write a fun game, be someone that people can hang a story on.

I got in the door at my last gig before this one because I wrote mods for Kerbal Space Program, and my boss's son played that game, so I was instantly more than just some guy with a degree from a random college - I was the guy that kept his son entertained and educated for hundreds of hours. And it didn't matter that I only wrote a tiny bit of code for the game, he anchored me to his son being happy, and bam - I've got the job.

Yeah fuck that. I don't have a degree and I'm glad I don't. Most of the kids around me with CS degrees don't know how to problem-solve. They know algorithms, they know something they call UX design, but they don't know how to figure out the right solution to the problem.

You want to learn to program? Fucking learn to program. It's just like lifting but for your brain. Go download some open video game like Kerbal Space Program, set up a github account, and start coding. Once you've proven that you can do something useful, download an Android dev kit and build yourself your own mobile app.

You don't need some shitty 4 year degree to 'prove' that you can code. I spent 10 years as a tech lead, and I will tell you that if you come to me with an app that works and does something useful, and you walk me through the trickiest part of the function library, and I will fucking hire you on the spot, no interview.

And anywhere that needs to ask you bullshit algorithm questions after vetting your CSE credentials isn't a place you want to work for, anyways.

BF's currently at 15%.

I'm currently lifting way less than I should (roughly once per week) but I spend a lot of time in between lugging around metal / lumber / etc., so I don't know what to cash that out to.

I damn well do treat them like people.

They are 20-something Bay Area tech nerds, and I am a 42 year old man with literally twice their life experience. They are here because they WANT to learn from me. They explicitly ASKED me to come be part of this.

Learn to make better assumptions.

Oh, and some caveats:

You need to prove that the change you made saved the company money, but don't think that they're letting you get away with it because you saved them money. No, they're letting you get away with it because you back up your actions. You buck the status quo, they challenge you, you throw down figures like a boss. The "proof" is just a prop you need to be able to stare down the first guy that challenged you, and say "your challenge is stupid and you should feel bad, I saved this company $3 million dollars so unless you can pony up that much cash, you have to back down and eat shit for challenging my initiative". That gets people's attention.

(Obviously don't SAY "back down and eat shit" unless you're in some boiler room money market firm; most companies reward people who 'play the game' and playing the game involves corpspeak and feigning civility while emasculating your competition.)

Yeah. It takes a weird combination of empathy and cynicism.

So, first, a parable:

There was this research project involving monkeys. Research projects involving monkeys are usually awesome and hilarious just by themselves, but this one also produced a super important result. But first, the awesome and hilarious setup:

Shove a bunch of monkeys in a room, put a bunch of bananas hanging from the ceiling, stick a ladder under the bananas, point a fire hose at the ladder. Whenever monkeys start to climb the ladder to get at the bananas, hose every motherfucking monkey down with the firehose, whether they were on the ladder or not.

Predictably, the monkeys will start beating the shit out of any monkey that goes near the ladder, no matter how hungry they all are.

Now, feed them some kibble and repeat. Do this a few times until the monkeys have all got it fully ingrained into monkey culture that ladder = beating. Then disconnect the hose.

The monkeys don't know the hose is disconnected, of course, so they keep beating the shit out of any monkey that goes near the ladder.

Swap out a monkey for a fresh monkey, one that never got hosed. What's he do? He makes a bee line for the ladder, because hey! Bananas! (The scientists DID remember to throw out the old nasty-ass bananas and put up fresh ones.) What do the other monkeys do? beat the shit out of him, of course.

Next day, swap out ANOTHER old hose-monkey for a fresh non-hosed monkey. What's he do? Beeline for the ladder! What do they do? Beat the shit out of him!

Repeat this process until there isn't a SINGLE monkey in the pack who EVER got the hose. And then, put in a new monkey.

They STILL beat the shit out of him. Why? Because "that's how we do it here!"

...

What's the point of that lesson?

When you look around you in an office, you'll see a LOT of stuff that's just... stupid. Stuff that makes no goddamn sense, wastes money, and makes everyone miserable.

Some of that stuff is there because someone's got a hose pointed at the office, and will punish everyone if they try to make an improvement.

But OTHER stuff is there because, a long time ago, someone USED to have a hose pointed at the office, but they're long gone - and still, the monkeys beat up anyone that could get them the bananas, because "that's how we do things around here."

Learn to say "fuck that" and pay attention.

Sometimes someone has a hose pointed at everybody for a good reason - maybe some improvements actually come at a steep cost somewhere else in the organization - but more often than not it's just because someone wants to make a dick-print on the office environment and has the power to do so. Trust me, you don't wanna cross those guys.

But again, sometimes there's just... no reason to do the dumb thing anymore.

So learn to keep your eyes open, and notice all the little things that could be improved, and then look a step deeper and notice all the things that actually CAN be improved without your ass getting fired for trying.

And then come in and do one of them. There's this dog-and-pony show where you have to do some kind of analysis and "show your work" and make it look like you're doing it for your boss, but if you just do it you can often just fucking wing that part. The real analysis you need is in cost savings - be able to PROVE that the change you made saved the company money, and someone with a high six-figure salary will notice you. Do it with a minimum of personal effort, and you've just bought a ticket out of loserdom.

I'd strongly recommend reading Venkatesh Rao's "Gervais Principle" stuff before trying any of this, though, and cross-correlating with the relevant bits from "The 48 Laws of Power".

Internal tool development for a Bay Area tech startup.

It's technically a software job, but most of my expertise comes from not listening to my supervisors, figuring out what the other employees actually need, and then building it for them. Which means that the CTO and the CEO love me, so I can continue to basically do my own thing.

I've got 3 roommates who share the rent with me, even though I could manage it on my own. I'm effectively the chief, and I've hand-picked roommates who will (generally) defer to my expertise and vision - I'm working on building an environment where I can maintain my frame effortlessly at home, before I try to take it out into the wild.

My current salary: $6,250 twice a month.

Each paycheck, $2,500 comes off the top to the government. $3,750 goes into my bank account. $1,250 of that goes into my checking account; I live on it for two weeks. $2,500 goes into my savings account. I only touch it when something fucks up (like my car getting totaled by a psycho ex).

I started my job seven months ago, flat broke. I've now got $15,000 in savings, a year lease on a 4-bedroom house on top of the Berkeley hills, a zippy little two-seater convertible to cruise down the coast in, and a workshop in my garage with a 3D printer, a full set of woodworking tools, a drill press, and I'm working on a backyard forge.

By summer 2017, I intend to take $35,000 in savings to the Big Island in Hawaii, buy a little plot on the south side of the volcano, and build an off-grid vacation bungalow from scratch.

Still haven't got laid in 8 months.

But in this case testable! We can, at the very least, check the Y chromosomes of purported male-line descendants, and see if they contain any Semitic genetic markers.

Well, honestly it's more than just that.

Let's say you've found that perfect woman, who's fallen completely in love with you and wants to stay with you "forever".

Great!

But that's who she is RIGHT NOW. It's not a lie, it's not a deception, it's not even "hamsterwheeling" per se - although it likely will be later. What it is, right now, is her.

The mistake people make is thinking that "her" is some immutable thing, instead of a product of her current body, her current habits, and her current environment.

Lemme put this a different way, for those of you who don't want to give up on LTR: the effort of getting a woman is nothing compared to the effort of keeping her. (And if you don't think that effort is worth it, fucking awesome - you go do you, and I don't blame you one bit. But if you find that it is worth it, intrinsically, then maybe all my pontificating can help.)

This is why the "Captain and First Mate" dynamic is so important - you HAVE to maintain an environment where YOU are her best option. Because the moment her environment contains options that look better than you, guess what's going to happen?

And you can mitigate that by adjusting her habits - getting her to not look so readily, or to find things to be dissatisfied. But that's not a conscious process; that's itself a product of the environment that you shape.

Radical self-ownership is scary. It's scary because EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS TO YOU IS YOUR FAULT.

Which means that if she left you, you have no one else to blame. Especially not her - no matter how tempting it might be.

Because she was a body, with habits, in an environment - and this is what happened. You want something different to happen? Build her a different environment. Teach her new habits. Help her forge a better body.

And if you do all that and she STILL leaves, thank her for teaching you a lesson - because you just found out that the particular environment and habits you built, and the particular woman whose body you chose to inhabit them with you, were NOT the ones that will give you what you want. That's a valuable lesson, so pay the fuck attention when it happens.

And then build a NEW environment, and forge NEW habits, and sculpt yourself a NEW body - and find NEW womens' bodies and habits to inhabit that new environment with you, and see what happens.

... I mean fuck, how do you think the guys who know what they're talking about around here figured it out in the first place?

I want to get married. I don't want monogamy. Any potential LTR that I date will know this and be okay with it, or she isn't for me.

I want to get married because someday I will want children, and I will want the community to recognize my rights regarding those children.

I want to get married because I take vows and oaths seriously, and I want to declare publicly that I am committing to all the acts that will raise strong children, commit permanently to my community, and signal to my neighbors that I am trustworthy and secure.

... oh, wait, do you mean that farce of a thing they call "marriage" down in the courthouse?

Yeah, fuck that.

You're focusing on the rant-like; he's focusing on the banter.

No one's going to get hot listening to Ben Stein unless they have money. But the bar scene in Good Will Hunting isn't a bad template for how to do it right.

So SMV means nothing for young beautiful women.

confused look that is so not what he said. He's describing what SMV is for young beautiful women. You're confusing map for territory.

Not a virgin. I had a really awful teens, awful 20s, amazing early 30s, awful late 30s, and what's looking like awful 40s. I'd rather get back to the amazing part.

Running local events, at my house when I'm running a party, fuck they could maybe just swipe right on Tinder.

I hang out here because you guys are factually correct, not because I share your values. You aren't going to sell me on nihilism.

Yes, I care about getting laid. But I care more about great-great-grandchildren having it better than I do.

Yeah, still working on that. Progress is really really slow.

The really horrible thing you're pushing in your post is that men have to work at this, in order to deserve a hot woman, they must "work hard" "do chores" "be master chef's" fucking utterly bullshit you're shoveling here. Read the side bar.

Yeah, this. The thing that matters (and the thing I fail at, despite my "impressive" resume) is frame. Have frame, and you can be objectively worthless and STILL win. Don't have frame, and you'll lose every time to fuckers with one-tenth your "value".

That's sure true. :( Around here I can at least have intelligent conversations.

Bondage.

Also there's no way I can handle GMOW. I need a harem again, or my chi will get so yang-heavy I'll start spewing cum from my nipples.

Yeah, and bay is rich-male-fuck heavy. But if I go anywhere else I won't be pulling 6 figures, and I'm having trouble saving even at 6 figures because the fucking bay is hyperinflated to hell and back.

Mostly online. Here's the full setup for my current process:

• Buy a Formlabs Form2 printer and a dremel.
• Learn to do 3D design in Blender
• Design the jewelry in Blender
• Buy wax casting resin from Formlabs
• Buy silver or gold pellets online
• Make some casting sand and a coffee-can crucible
• Print your form in the 3D printer using the wax casting resin
• Pack it with casting sand and stick it in a coffee can
• Pack the rest of the can with sand
• Light up the crucible and drop in the metal
• Pour the metal onto the sprue tap on top of the sand
• Let it cool
• Pop it out, cut the sprue, then sand and polish the metal with the dremel.

It's about a $4K setup, but it's well worth it for the kind of weird precision work I'm experimenting with.

(Also super fun for making bondage gear with, which is about half of what I meant by "jewelry" anyways.)

Okay. So everyone knows I can cook like a motherfucker. My steaks are to die for. My turkey dinners bring crowds. Fuck, my chicken mushroom casserole is something people come to me and beg me to make for them.

I'm not cut, but I'm well on the skinny side of 'skinny-fat'. For 42, I look like I'm 30 and I've got more muscle definition than most of the 20-something tech nerds.

I make $150K a year at a bullshit Bay Area startup, writing internal QA tools.

I built my own bookshelves in a weekend. 20 foot wall of solid pinewood, stained and detailed, and a hidden "pull the candelabra and the last shelf slides aside to reveal a secret passageway to my bedroom" mechanism above it, with recessed track lighting on the top to light up the whole room.

I make gold and silver jewelry in a forge in my spare time.

I'm the guy people call when they need their car fixed, when they need their furniture repaired, when they need their computer unfucked from whatever ridiculous shit they downloaded. I'm the guy.

I still can't pull a 7, let alone a 9.

And the reason is simple, and it has NOTHING to do with needs. Most of the 20-something shits around me are rolling in pussy, for two simple reasons:

Arrogance, and lack of giving a shit about the future.

I mean, sure, they care about their future. But not a one of them is willing to stand up and fix the mess our society is turning into. Every last one of them just wants to party and get laid while Rome burns.

And it works, because being the kind of person who still cares about building and guarding Civilization, isn't sexy.

So yeah, tell me another.

(EDIT: LOL, I said I made jewelry in a forge. Derp.)

The Poe's Law is strong with this one.

Reddit, why are you this way?

what's Dating Kinky?

I think it was aesthetically awful to have the VIP be a 'Mech. In all other game modes, the objective is a tracked vehicle with a large mobile HQ mounted on top of it, with radar dishes on top of that. Why couldn't that be the escort target?

I wouldn't mind seeing this reposted with a [serious] tag.

Example content, each is an opener to a different person:

"Hello! We're too far away for this to matter, but you're the first person who's ever showed up with a 99% match rate."

"You're super introverted and overwhelmed by socialization, but you read body language really well? It is super awesome to see someone else with this set of talents and quirks. :)"

"Have you interacted at all with the local Rationalist community? These guys are all about quantified self/analytics stuff."

"Have you had a chance to read the truly excellent comic-strip version of 'Zhuang-zi Speaks'?"

"I'd love to see your sketch portfolio if you have one online."

"That's an amazing picture! Where was it taken?"

"Heya, what's your story?"

"Where did you get the Spider Jerusalem glasses?"

"I think you'll find, these days, that there are far more dragons than unicorns. Much less friendly, but the hoard of gold can be a nice perk."

"Damn, those are some super-intense eyes."

"You seem particularly awesome. Want to get {coffee/tea/monster} somewhere?"

And as the guy, I definitely have to send all the messages?

Eh, I change my approach and my profile every 2-3 years or so, completely, because I'm so fed up with nothing working. Whenever I do, I ask for help, and everyone always says "no WONDER you never get any responses! Your profile is awful! Here, say <X> instead!", so I do, and then it doesn't work... so a few months later I complain about that, and the people who helped say "well you have to stick with it!"... then a few years later I'm fed up, and show it off, and they (or other people) say "No wonder you never get anywhere! Your profile is awful! Here, do <Y> instead!", so I do...

Then every few iterations of this, I just say "fuck it, I'll just be me", and write my own profile, and also don't get anything, and don't cause any change to peoples' reactions.

I'm betting they stand to make well more than $1 if they scam correctly - I know I got hit with far more scammers than spammers.

How long did that take? I've been on it since 2004 and still haven't ever really got a reply from anyone.

"Mom fucked us up more than we thought."

Interesting. I haven't even found OkCupid to work for general dating.

Echoing the sentiment that this would be awesome if real. I've been looking for quite awhile for someone to help around the laboratory with my... experiments.

I didn't say that it was. But it does make his manly behaviors look even manlier, while it makes a non-manly guy's other behaviors look even more pathetic.

I cast Manic Missile.

Actually, I hate to burst your bubble, but this isn't true.

Chad can cry to your wife/gf for comfort. You know he can, you've probably seen him do it back before your gf got with you. Or you've seen him do it with other girls, or heard other girls talk about how sweet it was.

YOU can't cry to your wife/gf, because YOU aren't Chad. Crying to your wife/gf without being Chad, is beta.

It's called "countersignalling", and it works like this:

Poor people have to wear poor people clothes, because they can't afford better clothes. They look trashy doing it because you can tell they're poor.

Middle class people who wear poor people clothes look trashy, because people can't tell if they're middle class pretending to be poor, or actually poor. In order to look classy, they have to wear rich people clothes, and hope that people mistake them for rich.

This means that rich people might be mistaken for middle class, which is bad. But rich people can wear poor people clothes and look trendy, because everyone knows they're not poor, so wearing poor people clothes shows that they can flout fashion and get away with it (unlike a middle class person). The fact that they're wearing poor people clothes and getting away with it differentiates them from the poor AND the middle class.

With emotions, this works the same way. Chad can cry to your wife and this makes him look even manlier, and makes her want to fuck him even more, because there's no way she could mistake him for you. But you cry to your wife, and you're losing half your stuff and your kids, and she's never fucking you again.

I'm curious if girls have a different experience re: sponsoring, than guys do.

I'm curious if there's a gender difference going on here.

A serious thing to consider - a 64 character password that's nothing but letters, spaces and capitalization is more secure than an 8 character password with numbers and punctuation, AND easier to remember.

"Thrown Farthing Penance Cup" is actually just as secure as "a8KV!p1GG5", and waaaay easier to remember.

Is there a good way to transition from unknown-but-talented to known-and-skilled? Going to local munches and parties doesn't seem to lead to many opportunities to show off my stuff, these days.

Woohoo! Looks like Shadowrun's only 5 years late, guys!

Having a fiancee.

Yes, exactly. And there's higher risks to women imparted by this process, too, but those are different risks than the risks imparted to men. (For women, it's mostly the risk that she'll wind up pushed / coerced into a situation that's unhealthy for her, and have nowhere to turn because everyone agrees that "he's such a great guy")

I'm saying that if they don't - if a scene plays out in a a way such that the audience doesn't believe that the top 'deserves' to be experiencing the scene - people WILL swoop in to 'rescue' the bottom, either during or after the fact.

Fuck, I don't even bother anymore. It's not like it will matter.

You don't know if someone has consented. All you know is whether people approve of the interaction, and you only know that after the fact.

The thing that makes a girl incapable of making up her own mind, is the fact that the entire culture is invested in second-guessing her decision in the interest of "protecting" her, because there's a lot of social capital to be gained from doing so (and because more often than not they want their turn with her).

Does that mean my consent in a scene is less important than an observer's comfort?

Empirically, yes. But you can solve this by playing with hotter people.

I am not being sarcastic. And I am not just talking about false rape accusations. I'm also talking about accusations of "being unsafe" or "being disrespectful to people's boundaries" or "gaslighting" or "setting up situations with naive girls who need to be protected when he should know better".

If someone voices explicit, enthusiastic consent, they might be lying, or they might be afraid to withhold consent, or they may get embarrassed later and change their mind retroactively. In any of these situations, you will be held accountable for violating consent.

Everyone should know that voiced explicit consent, even enthusiastic explicit consent, does not mean that they actually consented.

Go back in time and mentor myself to be more confident and less socially awkward, also to make sure I ate properly so I didn't grow up with obvious malnutrition-related growth stunting.

Bless the Maker and all His Water. Bless the coming and going of Him, May His passing cleanse the world. May He keep the world for his people.

The Battlestar Galactica reboot.

Sure, but you're an exception. Moreso, most of this shit is baked in during Jr. High and High School.

Guys are taught to not show that sort of stuff. By girls. Because when they do, they're mocked for being vulnerable.

I generally construct them myself. BDSM has forced me to learn tailoring, carpentry, fashion design, plastic mold casting, metalworking, electronics...

what.

Trump: Master of the neg.

One exercise I once did, was take D&D4E's idea of splitting 'role' and 'class' all the way to its natural end, just to get how each 'class' (special effects / thematic aesthetic) could fulfill each 'role' (functional purpose on the battlegrid).

Wound up with something like this:

Theme: Fighter

• Fighter Tank: Knight - heavy armor, lots of close-range control (aggro etc.)
• Fighter DPS: Warrior - heavy weapons means heavy damage, mastery of every conceivable weapon
• Fighter Control: Scout/Ranger - archery, mobility, tracking, predicting your enemy's actions, and Legolas-level bullshit
• Fighter Buff: Marshal - Lead-from-the-front, lots of inspiration and tactical coordination effects

Theme: Rogue

• Rogue Tank: Acrobat - kite and dodge, baby
• Rogue DPS: Assassin - backstab from the shadows
• Rogue Control: Thief - clever ruses, pebbles thrown into bushes, traps and counter-traps
• Rogue Buff: Bard - Inspiration, leadership, chicanery and bullshit, all with a pinch of magic.

Theme: Mage

• Mage Tank: Abjurer - shields, wards, deflection spells, and curses against those who attack my allies
• Mage DPS: Evoker - I CASTS THE SPELLS THAT MAKES THE PEOPLE FALL DOWN!
• Mage Control: Conjurer - Summoning allies, crafting illusions, muddling the mind, and generally being a bit of a dick.
• Mage Buff: Artificer - Alchemical potions, magical buffs to armor and weapons, and wacky inventions that just... might... work.

Theme: Priest

• Priest Tank: Paladin - Don't worry yon maiden, I'LL SAVE YOU!
• Priest DPS: Inquisitor - Wooden stakes, silver bullets, holy water, and a prayer book. The power of Pelor COMPELS you!
• Priest Control: Theurge - locusts, plague, darkness, cats and dogs living together, real wrath-of-God shit.
• Priest Buff: Cleric - healing, blessing, holy warding... The Blessings of the Goddess be upon you, brother.

I think it looks funny, and keeps fire on me while my lancemates finish you off.

I'm in a bright pink atlas WITH a giant yellow smiley face, thank you very much.

also, bright decals on your head can help break up the lines of your cockpit, making it harder for people to get headshots.

Realize that you OWN yourself, completely, in the real way - and that means it's your sovereign right to give yourself to whom you choose.

Regrettably no. I'm single this year, and going as a single male Dom has never really been very fun.

It's not the lack of sodium or potassium, it's the inability to keep the sodium and potassium on the correct sides of their membranes.

Basically, think of the sodium and potassium rich fluids as a rechargeable battery, which the brain recharges via power it generates from burning glucose. When the glucose runs out, the battery runs out too.

That's not a bad way to think about it. It's not 100% accurate, but it's close enough for 'getting' it.

Or he'll bring three of his buddies, and escalate.

Yep! It's just the medium-LOD model, that kicks in past 250 meters. The CT is still there; it's just rotated 90 degrees, which puts it in entirely the wrong position.

First design principle is "expect you're actually fighting a 23v1 battle, where eleven of your enemies are behind you and you aren't allowed to shoot at them."

In a sense, all audio files are simply ways of enumerating songs. (otherwise you couldn't distinguish between one recording and another, or between one cover and another)

One of the frustrating things I've noticed from reading it, is that there's stuff that probably works great at T1-T2, that's absolutely shit at T4.

Most of metamechs seems like bullshit to me. Can you explain why it's worth reading?

Well, yeah. It's the perfect con.

I can only dream to someday have a relationship as fulfilled, loving, and healthy as Gomez and Morticia's.

IK means knockdown is back, right?

Untrue; look at what Patraeus got.

What is true is that there's one kind of justice for people like Clinton or Patraeus, and another for people like Channing or Snowden.

I'm curious what "actively trying to get away from" means. I'd love to see the actual video of the physical actions that occurred on each side.

How do you NOT realize that the person you're dealing with is paralyzed? They're RIGHT THERE.

In the lamplight, the withered leaves collect at my feet...

40 Heatcap for a lolcust, with a shutdown at 20? with 75 kph top speed after three LPLs?

A locust should never, ever have three LPLs to begin with. The game meta has been severely warped by the terribly incomplete heat system coded in since 2013.

Now you would penalize builds that dont actually need heatsinks, like AC builds, for building up heat. This incentivizes them to build in more heatsinks, at which point they would just convert to lasers. You slashed meta diversity.

...no? You're just making things up. AC2, 5, 10 are all very low heat compared to even a Medium Laser. But that's arguing at the wrong level of detail.

Shooting at an enemy now has enormous repercussions, as at any moment, you could get attacked by somebody who held off of shooting and can now severly outpace and outmaneuver you.

This is intentional. It's a much more strategic system than the current 'ghost heat' solution (which is terrible and needs to die.)

And finally, penalizing clan XL for losing a side more than currently, on top of the movement penalty incurred by losing the engineslots and the lower heatcap further lowering the effective movement in your system.

Engine slot movement penalty is dumb and shouldn't happen. It should be a heat cap penalty instead (like in the TT game).

Eh. Proper solution is:

• drop base heat cap to 30.
• set dissipation to 0.1 for singles, 0.2 for doubles
• set capacity to +1 per heat sink, REGARDLESS of single or double.
• code in graduated heat penalties from 0 to [cap], with an automatic shutdown at [cap/2] unless override is engaged.
• from 10% of cap to 60%, top speed, accel/decel, turn rate, twist rate and arm twist rate each decreases by 1% (so at 11% you're at -1% to each; at 60% you're at -40% to each.)
• from 50% of cap to 100%, you take 0.1 point of internal structure damage to your head per second if your Life Support System has been damaged (otherwise you're fine).
• from 50% of cap to 100%, you have a (heat % / 4) chance of taking a critical hit to an ammunition slot each second - so 12% at 50% of cap, and 25% at 100% of cap.
• each engine critical hit taken lowers the heat cap by -5, and lowers dissipation by -0.5.

Midnight... not a sound on the pavement...

This is why I wish they'd gone with 0.2 dissipation / 1.0 threshold for doubles, and 0.1 dissipation / 1.0 threshold for singles.

YES. INSTANTLY.

Either way I win.

Whether I should live or die.

Sure. He's endangering them by being on the streets.

I actually asked my school administrators to let me write software for them. They said no, and put me on a list of kids to watch.

?

Of course they do. The industry's anti-piracy stance has never been about the money.

Too late, now that it's happened this is the new normal.

Absolutely, but he does so in such a hostile, aggressive way that people eat it up.

This is what we've come to, folks.

Who cares if he's lying? He'll just keep saying it until it sticks. It doesn't matter how much you call him on it. He isn't about facts; he's about having the biggest balls in the room and being unafraid to win, no matter who or what gets hurt in the process.

Remember that humans - men and women alike - don't tend to process social dynamics in terms of facts; they process in terms of narratives.

Our culture has lots of narratives to pull from, mostly provided by the media for the past century.

You need to look a part, and then act that part, and then have the resources to back that act up. You need to find someone famous who you could emulate, and then own that narrative by incorporating parts of yourself into it.

The narrative role women are most looking for in an alpha is the 'bad-ass'. So look back and ask yourself, who do you know in your gut was a bad-ass?

If you're east asian, look to Bruce Lee.

If you're south asian / indian, you're going to have a harder time, but being cut, confident, rich, well-dressed, slow-speaking, and in control will go a long way.

Heh. I wonder, how does one become an on-camera top for them?

Although D&D3.5 had a really ingenious solution to this - every 2 squares of diagonal movement cost an extra move, for a total of 3.

This approximates the square root of 2 (1.4142) as 1.5, which as it turns out is really pretty good.

I feel like this is really, really dangerous advice for people who are too far on the left side of the Dunning-Kruger curve; there's a real danger of not just getting socially ostracized, but actually getting prosecuted for attempted rape.

I notice that most of the people I interact with become upset if I ask for validation, loyalty, or trust. They either feel that I act "entitled" to them, or if I explicitly start a relationship by asking how to earn them, they feel that I'm being manipulative by trying to earn them consciously instead of subconsciously. So even if they are basic human needs, many people don't get to have them filled, because it makes others too uncomfortable to think that they need them.

Already on depression medication, and most therapists find me pretty difficult to work with.

As soon as I redeemed my 1 day free premium time, I kept getting booted (and taking 3+minutes to reconnect). No bonuses for me!

yep, editing it had no effect; deleting it worked. Thanks!

I have no overlays. Turns out I just had to delete attributes.xml and redo all my settings.

One obvious answer is to try to capture the entire world in the Mirror of Erised's reflection

Easy to do if the Mirror is transported into space. Pale Blue Dot, and all that.

Change the heat scale to be more TT-like and they won't.

https://media.giphy.com/media/6Fr7FIFGYfl9S/giphy.gif

All I can say is, he has truly atrocious web aesthetics.

I generally prefer D6's.

In fact, here's my general dice pool system:

Attributes (Strength,Dexterity,Constitution,Presence,Savvy,Composure,Logic,Intuition,Will) are your dice pool. If you have a Strength of 6, you will always roll 6 dice for Strength-based skill rolls.

Skill level (Untrained, Novice, Professional, Advanced, Expert) always determine your target number with each die. Untrained = 6, Novice = 5-6, Professional = 4-6, Advanced = 3-6, Expert = 2-6. A '6' always explodes (adds another D6 to the roll, at the same TN).

Difficulty determines the threshold - i.e., how many dice must reach or exceed the threshold in order to succeed at the task. So an easy task might have a threshold of 1; a moderate task a threshold of 3; a difficult task a threshold of 5. As long as you roll at least 1 net success, you achieve some kind of progress; threshold just determines how hard it is to get what you're actually trying to accomplish.

Phoenix Hawk, Charger, Cyclops, Vulcan.

Hi there! My game, MechBrawl, has an extensive combat system built into it - that's actually the whole point of the game.

Basic gist: there are cards that represent units, there are cards that represent upgrades to units (weapons they can mount, etc.) and there are cards that represent maneuvers that units can perform.

A unit's stats determine how many maneuvers it can perform and how many upgrades it can hold; once a unit or upgrade is played it stays 'on the field' until it is destroyed, while maneuvers go back into your hand at the end of each 'round' of combat (where a 'round' means "all units have played as many maneuvers as they are allowed to").

There are no dice; maneuver cards come with modifiers to units' base stats, and the unit with the better numbers wins.

limbs.

"You're evil and ugly, and no one will ever love you."

Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town.

Fuck regrets.

I watched the Challenger explode live on TV in my second-grade classroom.

In which case, Tanks are your middle-management - most specifically, your project managers and cheerleaders.

Their job is to keep everyone else focused on the goal, keep spirits high, and when social threats to group cohesion come up, take the hit because they're the one who's ego can take it.

Mal from Firefly would be the social tank (whereas Inara is the social DPS and Kaylee is the social healer).

Exalted 2E used this concept, and it was called "Social Combat". It worked VERY well.

Why didn't you close Guantanamo Bay?

Where does one acquire those foot straps?

You want a King Crab. Dual LB10X king crabs are awesome. My fav build is 2xLB10X, 4xMPL, 4xLRM5.

If the target lock requirements for indirect LRM lock-on were increased by a factor of 4 or so without changing any of the other lock-on times, this would go a long way to fixing that.

well, no.

By cutting down forests, humans may be giving other humans, halfway across the world, malaria.

Externalities are a bitch.

Some of it has to do with harmonics.

With sound waves, something an octave up has twice the frequency of the same note an octave lower. Things that naturally vibrate at that frequency will be made to vibrate if they're near something loud at the same note, even if it's at a different frequency.

Light is also waves, and thus has a frequency (which determines - or rather IS - its color). Violet is close enough to blue to register as bluish, but it's also close enough to twice red's frequency to register as reddish (even though it's nowhere near red).

Actually, in the specific case of heat sinks, it makes a kind of weird sense to have the external heat sinks dissipate more - they're actually exposed to the outside, where they can do proper heat-exchange.

I always felt like external heat sinks should have better dissipation, while internal heat sinks should have higher capacity.

It should really be the other way, actually. If you're willing to pay the critical slots (which are DHS's only disadvantage), you should get the bonus.

• KGC-0000 4xLRM5, 4xMPL, 2xLB10X, 1xBAP
• MAD-5D 2xLRM5, 3xERLL, 1xERPPC, 1xTAG, 1xBAP
• CRB-27SL 6xMLAS, 1xBAP
• SDR-5D 1xERLL, 1xTAG, 1xECM

Talking about the article includes talking about whether the article is a correct focus for media and culture to be taking.

Fine, but can we start with the TRILLIONS of dollars spent on the war itself?

It boggles the mind that we're concerned about $150 million dollars spent on luxury for a few higher-ups, and not TRILLIONS of dollars spent on the bombing, the torturing, and the feeding of young men into a meat-grinder.

Imagine this argument:

"Daddy blew a hundred thousand dollars on his gambling addiction. Wait, and he bought BEER while he was there!? He spent twenty dollars on BEER!?"

It's a weird kind of scope insensitivity.

Actually, no. "Underage" refers to many different things, often ambiguously, and people love to switch meanings in the middle of these conversations for rhetorical points. Like you're doing right now.

You'll wind up hating me after awhile - anywhere from a year to three - when you realize that I don't live up to the fantasy of me you had in your head.

I make a mix - my King Crab has four LRM5's and 5 tons of ammo, but it also has four medium pulse lasers and two LB10X's. The LRMs are basically there so that when I wind up having to waddle my fat butt halfway across the map to get into the brawl, I can still contribute.

I try to avoid just sitting behind a hill and lurming - I'm always trying to actively engage, but if I'm stuck because I'm a slow assault and the rest of the team ditched me, I can at least help them out from halfway across the map.

Also, in many cases, even if the LRMs aren't hitting, I'm still contributing by firing them. The key is to understand your opponent's psychology and watch the battlemap - if an enemy mech is engaged with 3 of my teammates, firing LRMs at him (even at super-long range) gives him yet another thing to worry about. Or, if an enemy mech is sniping at my teammates or spotting for his own team's LRM fire, LRMs will make him ditch his firing position and find cover - which keeps him from harrassing my side.

This is a lot less useful when you're wasting 20 missiles per trigger-pull, but with LRM5s you can definitely shape your opponents' behavior with a few judicious volleys.

As long as they don't think too hard about what this implies about "consent", sure.

"Oysapsay. Llanih uhretnorfh ail. 'Enterprise' raletsey evaan al eyd sejayeev sohl nos sotsay."

I think this about covers it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2bk_9T482g

You make me sad. So be it.

Bleh. I personally think they should keep armlock, AND have mechs with lower arm actuators raise their arms when locked.

Your mother, your fiance's mother, and your fiance's ex-wife are all financially unstable, untrustworthy, and self-serving. Most likely, they got this way from harsh necessity, because their own families were financially unstable, untrustworthy, and self-serving.

You're going to find yourself at a serious disadvantage trying to maintain your finances, compared to people with stable and supportive families. People will not understand this, and will expect you to carry your weight anyways. In order to do so, you will have to start making tough choices about how to maintain an appearance of success (which is necessary in our status-driven culture) while not being drained by people around you.

If you are not very careful, this will end up with you having to compromise your integrity for the sake of your family's survival, and more than likely STILL won't be enough - at which point, the stresses will break your family apart. By this time, of course, you'll have sold away your integrity without ever noticing it, and won't even notice that you're lying, grubbing, and shirking your responsibilities.

And I don't say this because you're a bad person; I say this because statistically, the good ones either turn bad or buckle.

Your mom, your fiance's mother, and your fiance's ex wife might have even seemed like good people once, before the cycle got to them. But unless they were aware of how hard it ws, and what their options were, and what the likely outcomes were, they never even had a chance to escape.

I hope you find a chance to escape.

This right here is what people mean when they say "cycle of poverty".

Spider-5V. One Medium Pulse Laser, one TAG, 12 Jump Jets.

So. Much. Fun.

Something like it will hold, yes. If RP views become widespread, then everyone who has them loses their edge, and has to start competing on even more stringent criteria.

Yes. More generally, it's a power law distribution.

To be honest, women aren't that important to me most of the time. (I have moods and moments that are exceptions.)

But status and power are important to me, because they let me get what I want, which is control over my reality and the ability to craft great and lasting works.

The thing is, there's this psychological concept called the "halo effect", which means that people will give you more respect - and thus more access to resources - if they perceive you as having desirable / enviable traits. And if they perceive you as having ONE desirable or enviable trait, they will assume you have a LOT of them.

And for most men, being able to bang hot girls is a highly enviable trait.

So the girl on my arm may not matter much to me, but if I want to be taken seriously by the people I care about, she'd better be at LEAST an HB9, and she better fucking know her role.

(tldr: when an ugly guy asks a pretty girl out, it threatens her standing. She's gotta be mean to him / call him a 'creeper' to protect herself.)

Fulltext: When a guy lower on the social totem pole asks a girl higher on the social totem pole out, that girl's reputation is on the line - if she's seen to not punish guys who are 'beneath her' who make the mistake of asking her out, then other people might think that the other guy isn't beneath her - which means her own status and reputation suffers. Now, if she's SO high above him that it's obvious, then she can afford to be magnanimous and kind - letting him down gently. But if there's any chance at all that people could ask "wait, is she actually one of the losers?", then she pretty much has to crush him to prevent her own social clique from descending on her like a pack of vultures.

It's the way of the world.

Have to second the "halo effect", but note that money can compensate for facial asymmetry, as can height (if not fat), as can the right kind of charisma. It takes a LOT of each of them to compensate, of course, and it's a lot harder to get all of those things if people see you as "off", but it does explain anomalous exceptions.

I'd love to see a team with 8 Crabs and 4 King Crabs.

"I wasn't done yet!"

I have a King Crab with 4 LRM5's, 4 MPL's, and 2 LB10X that performs weirdly well. I spend the first 3 to 5 minutes of the match hiding behind hills, pouring LRMs onto whoever my teammates are engaging - then, once I've fired all 900 missiles (or sooner, if the enemy closes ranks), I switch to brawling - often tearing already-damaged mechs to pieces.

I intend to produce exactly this mod as my "hey guys I'm back!" gift, once 1.1 comes out.

Resources will be:

• LiquidFuel (Kerosene)
• Oxidizer (N2O4)
• CryoFuel (Liquid Hydrogen)
• CryOx (Liquid Oxygen)
• MonoPropellant (Hydrazine mixture)
• XenonGas

no, actually, I think they're completely aware of it. They waited until the camera was on them, then deliberately behaved this way because they knew it would get a rise out of people.

I built a koi pond in my back yard, and I have a rather nice hydroponics garden growing on my roof.

These days I'm experimenting with self-maintaining solar powered infrastructure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IlQUuTjNW8

I've been playing since closed beta, and I'm firmly in the middle of Tier 5.

I also have terrible hand-eye coordination and very slow reflexes.

Fact: I've been playing since closed beta, and I'm in Tier 5.

It wouldn't look like self-pity if he were attractive.

I'd just pull out my priest robe.

The thing that cripples the 5V most is the lack of arm lasers - jumping on top of the hill on Alpine or Crimson Strait is useless if you can't aim down far enough to hit anyone below you.

"So, why did you never have kids?"

"So I could bang yours."

heh. Looks like you beat me to product release. Nice work, and congratulations!

note: the 'Bicameral Mind' theory doesn't require a higher power, is reductionist-deterministic, and is taken quite seriously by a large fraction of cognitive science.

heat damage is a terrible system; the heat scale needs to have increasing heat penalties past 50%

No, we should implement scaling heat penalties.

If you started losing max speed / twist rate at 20% of your heat cap, which scaled linearly down to a 50% speed / twist rate reduction at 99% heat cap, and an ECM effect at 80% heat, then people would be encouraged to keep their heat low.

Steps to take:

• Drop expenses to below $1.5k/month. If you're serious you can do this within 2-3 months without much planning. You're young, you don't need fancy shit yet. Trust me.

• Save, save, save. Commit to working this job for the next 4 years. It's EXACTLY like lifting. It seems boring, tedious, repetitive, but you're training mental resilience and you're massively increasing your SMV. The best part is, you can look at your bank account and see exactly how well you're doing. Treat your bank account like it's the high score of a fucking video game.

• In 4 years, you'll have saved $400,000. Walk into your boss's office, smile, shake his hand, and resign. Don't ask for a raise; they'll fucking offer you one. Walk out the door unless their first offer doubles your salary. REMEMBER THIS MOMENT, and use it to fuel your frame for the rest of your life.

• Take the $400,000 and sit on it for about a month while you brainstorm your own business. Split the $400,000 into three accounts. Call them "Runway" ($100k), "Capital" ($200k), and "Parachute" ($100k).

Your Runway is the money you'll be living in while you get your business off the ground. Since you're used to living on about $20K a year, you can easily afford $30K a year of starting business expenses and keep at it for two whole years while you pour your blood, sweat and tears into making it work.

The "Parachute" is what you use in case it all goes to shit. You keep your parachute ready so that failure no longer enters your mind while you start your business. You can go balls-to-the-wall with the Runway and Capital.

Your Capital is for investment opportunities that come along while you're getting your thing off the ground. Your Parachute is to survive on when things go to shit; your Capital is for planting seeds along the way so that, by the time this one succeeds or fails, you've grown a new $200K of runway and parachute to do it all over again.

WARNING WARNING WARNING: Do not spend any money on women during this time (this includes money spent on peacocking - things like fancy cars / etc.). There will be MORE hot 16-24 year old women for you when you're thirty-five and own your own successful business, than there are now when you're a well-paid chump. Money spent on fancy business suits to impress clients is totally worth it, but money spent on looking good to women is a waste of precious resources that you can grow exponentially later if you save them now.

tldr: Spend the next 4 years grinding, then play the fucking game like a champ.

In my own game, I just made symbols for the different monster types (Mercenary, Infernal, Undead, Natural, Draconic, Construct) like so:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0g8ajfxuu7ynyl0/Monster%20Icons.png?dl=0

You know no one cares, right? Power does what it wants, and people don't want to think about it.

Card balance and flavor in MechBrawl are finally exactly where I want them! Next step is to re-examine the 'Vs.' starter decks, to insure that each half of the deck is balanced against the other half, and ideally against either half of each other starter deck.

The largest complaint that people have given so far is that the first game tends to be overwhelming, which means I need to find a better way to communicate the core game flow to new players.

Any chance on making a configuration for Mac/OSX?

How do you feel about all the people in this thread refusing to take what you went through seriously? Does it bother you to deal with this kind of crap, then sit back and see how many people don't even care how the social / economic / political machinery of our society operates?

If I were smart and evil, and knew that someone high-up were about to leave my organization, I'd assemble some blackmail on them, then force them into a figurehead leadership position - then make damn sure that their signature is on every terrible, illegal, beyond-the-pale thing that my organization was doing.

That way, if it DOES get exposed, they're the one who's going down.

Only if the judge cares. And how are you supposed to prove that they violated your rights, if you're dead or in jail and the video never surfaces?

If they're abusing their power, why would they let you video them?

Rather than denigrating someone's choices, how about finding someone who needs help and turning their life around?

Sometimes it's too fucking hard to go on, and people need help. Sometimes it's too fucking hard to help them, and people can't go on. Lord knows I've felt like it would be easier to end it sometimes. Hell, I still don't know if I've made the right choice by being here. Shit's hard, and if you don't know what I mean you're lucky. (And if you can say "I know exactly what you mean, but I'd never take the coward's way out!", you don't know what I mean at all.)

Isn't the Big Five model more accepted than Myers-Briggs?

So rather than 16 classes, you'd have five attributes:

Openness Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Stability

Of course.

Scottsdale?

Quick question: if you're filming from 30 feet away, and the officer steps 10 feet towards you and demands that you stop filming, what do you do?

Anyone else getting 800+ ping times?

I tend to run TAG in my Atlas-RS build, because 4 ERLL is too hot but 3 ERLL is perfectly manageable. Since I have an extra slot I'm not using, adding a TAG for my LRM10A (and for my teammates) seems worth the tonnage.

Yup! I'm in the process of slowly upgrading all my mechs to be competitive (and paying for QoL stuff, like not having to share one engine between all my Spiders and one zoom module between all my mechs).

Right now I'm running:

• Spider-5V - 255XL, 12JJ, 1xMPL, BAP, TAG, with a UAV and an Artillery Strike
• Spider-5K - 255XL, 6JJ, 1xAC2 (2.5t ammo), with a UAV and an Artillery Strike

• Spider-5D - 255XL, 8JJ, 1xERLL, ECM, BAP, TAG, with a UAV and an Artillery Strike

• Atlas-Boar's Head - 400XL, 6xMPL, 1xLB10 (3t ammo), 1xLRM10A (1t ammo), with Cool Shot-9 and a UAV

• Atlas-DDC - 325S, 2xLPL, 1xAC20 (3t ammo), 3xSSRM2 (1t ammo), ECM, BAP, with Cool Shot-9 and a UAV

• Atlas-RS(C) - 300S, 3xERLL, 1xGR (4t ammo), 1xLRM10A (3t ammo), TAG, BAP, CC, with Cool Shot-9 and an Artillery Strike

Right now I have Advanced Gyros for the Atlases and Shock Absorbers for the Spiders, plus Advanced Zoom for anything with long range weapons and Increased Radar Range for anything with a BAP.

I always keep Arm Lock on for my Spider-5V, and off for everything else. having a single crosshair on the 5V that's centered to my screen seems better for aiming while jumping.

Holy crap yes. Weirdly enough, turning down graphic settings did absolutely nothing - the only thing that affected framerate was dropping to 1280 x 720, which jumped my framerate from an average of 19 to an average of 45.

The game is SO MUCH more playable now!

Hmm, looks like it's consistently at 18-22, with dips to about 8-9.

When I do either of those things, people start yelling at me that I need to play more aggressively and stop camping.

My aim is too slow in my DDC; it was also too slow in my Spider before I mastered it, but nothing so bad as the DDC. (Mastering the DDC is going very slowly because of how difficult it is to control).

My in-game mouse settings are right at the middle (sensitivity), with smoothing on. If I turn smoothing off, the screen constantly rocks back and forth very slightly about 5-10 times per second, which is jarring.

I'm not complaining; mostly (when I'm in my Spider) I'm reporting grid coordinates of contacts as I scout, or declaring my cap targets on Conquest.

In general, it's towards the end of the fight, when I'm one of the last people left (after constantly jumping and sniping for the first half) that spectating teammates start complaining about how terribly I'm doing at taking down Atlases with my Spider.

My Spider-5D is a 255-XL, 8xJJ, ECM, an ERLL and TAG.

My Atlas-DDC is a 325-S, ECM, 2xLL, AC20, and 3xSRM6.

Both have DHS.

The frustrating thing is, I completely understand the abstract concept of "situational awareness", but how do you get it?

None of this is actually true. There are some rather promising methods to rehabilitate sex offenders, but we tend to not try them because they just aren't punitive or vicious enough.

One of the more common problems in our punishment-obsessed culture, is that there are lots of ways of actually reducing crime, but they'd involve focusing on actual rehabilitation rather than retribution - and we don't have the stomach for that.

And thus your boss wouldn't do it for you. He'd do it for someone that he had by the balls, so that he didn't have to pay the overtime.

Walk into a nationally broadcast televangelist show while it was live on the air, pull out a scourge, and start overturning podiums and shouting about his Father's house and dens of thieves.

My meager understanding is as follows:

Just "lead" by doing what you want to do. If people follow, they follow; if they don't, they don't. But lead as if you assume people will follow, and whether they do or not is what separates the men from the boys.

Bank accounts. Credit cards. Car loans. Home loans. Mobile phone accounts.

I notice that I am confused:

Demons have no electricity, but they can make flashes of light?

Can you describe what this 'light' is, then?

1. You can only perform one Response to a given action. So if you played Break Away, and your opponent played a Response (say, Change Tactics) to your Break Away, then sure you could Close In in response to his Change Tactics. But you can't play two Responses in response to one action.

2. A basic rule of the game is, "you decide which direction to round all of your own cards, and in what order to apply your own card effects". So you'd choose to round down, to prevent more damage. (On the other hand, if you play a card that halves your OWN damage, you could choose to round up)

3. It only counts for an incoming attack; damage is only dealt after everyone's Response chains have been worked out.

Just readjusted the contrast on all my Weapon and Chassis cards, and made a few small but major balance changes to Maneuvers.

Here's my current card set (use left and right arrow keys to pan through all 100+ cards and instructions): https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6sutklmqzl8rkfm/9qyDmk4gc0?lst#lh:null--%20Generic%20Card%20Back.png

nod yeah, that's one thing I'm definitely trying to avoid - there are currently six Response cards that can deal with a Strike:

• Break Away lets you Retreat one step, and reduces your opponent's accuracy by 1 if you use it during a Strike.
• Close In lets you Advance one step, and reduces your opponent's accuracy by 1 if you use it during a Strike.
• Counterattack lets you attack simultaneously, which doesn't defend you at all, but at least lets you hurt them back.
• Defensive Roll halves all the damage you take
• Dodge reduces the accuracy of all their weapons by between -1 and -4 (based on your Reaction skill).
• Seize the Initiative completely undoes the attack and gives you the next action, but also untaps all their weapons and puts their Strike card on the bottom of their deck, so that they effectively haven't used up the action slot - which means they can't perform that specific attack again, but you use up an action and they effectively don't.

There's also one Move card called Take Cover that sets up near-invulnerability for the turn, but it doesn't have any effect at Contact range, and it can be thwarted by two different Response cards (Seize the Initiative and Intercept).

Fawkes is actually a chicken, transfigured permanently into a phoenix.

As a game developer, how would you recommend a fellow developer who didn't have your name recognition succeed at a Kickstarter?

Not bothering with a throwaway because fuck it, if someone wants to figure out who I am because of this, they will.

Putting the age of consent at 18 harms children.

If the problem is people in power coercing people not in power, fix that problem; don't just force teenagers to lie and break the law to gain the necessary experience to make sexual life-choices.

Nearly everyone makes poor choices at first, whether "at first" happens at 14 or 21.

This is a subset of a more general problem, which is something like "society and parents should stop acting like they own their children". You have a responsibility to produce a responsible and self-directed adult; you do not have the right to dictate that adult's opinions and beliefs.

You absolutely can, if you know what you're doing. Plenty of startups / "entreperneurships" wind up cajoling their employees into skipping a few paychecks for the "good of the team".

If you want to run a scammy "debt collection" call center, it's even easier - just close up shop every 3 weeks and move to another warehouse, hire all new people, then disappear next payday and set up another one under a new name.

he may be obligated to pay all of his employees first, but that doesn't mean he's going to actually do it.

When you have enough money, you can get around pretty much any obligation.

how so? I'm afraid I'm not following

I'm not; MechBrawl uses a card system for its randomization effects.

I came up with something vaguely like this by starting from D&D2E and D&D4E.

Basically, I created a 16-class base system by intersecting four Roles (Striker, Tank, Controller, Buffer) with four Themes (Fighter, Rogue, Mage, Priest).

So you get:

Warrior (Fighter x Striker), Guard (Fighter x Tank), Scout (Fighter x Controller), Marshal (Fighter x Buffer),

Assassin (Rogue x Striker), Acrobat (Rogue x Tank), Thief (Rogue x Controller), Bard (Rogue x Buffer),

Evoker (Mage x Striker), Abjurer (Mage x Tank), Conjurer (Mage x Controller), Artificer (Mage x Buffer),

Inquisitor (Priest x Striker), Templar (Priest x Tank), Theurge (Priest x Controller), Cleric (Priest x Buffer)

A man can see the island,

they say,

through the mists,

when the sun's rays

part them.

No man can reach the island,

they say,

for Mother Sea

is treacherous

and deep.

Alone,

he ventures.

His canoe is battered.

Broken.

Demolished.

His body is hammered.

Soaked.

Torn.

He stands alone

on unfamiliar shores.

He dies alone

forgotten.

The next to come will be luckier.

By twos they come now,

and tens,

and slowly

so slowly

The land is filled.

The shore opens

to a whole new place

With new fruits

and new animals

and new dangers.

He is not afraid.

The other side

of the Great Jungle

can be seen,

they say,

if you stand atop

the highest hill.

No man can cross the jungle,

they say,

for Mother Earth

protects her own

with wild things,

and poisons.

Alone, he ventures.

He is hungry.

He is hurt.

He is frightened.

He stands alone

before the greatest desert

any man has ever seen.

He dies alone

forgotten.

The next to come will be luckier.

They cross the deserts, now,

in twos and threes

On camels, wagons and tents.

They reach far oases,

build cities,

erect temples

and statues

to those who came before.

A thousand corpses litter the desert,

ten thousand fill the jungles,

a million at the bottom of the sea.

The next to come will be luckier.

The first ships

to carry explorers,

pilgrims,

seekers of fortune

and freedom...

Not all who started the journey,

finished it.

The next to come will be luckier.

It is for them that we do this thing.

Tilt.

Tilt the phone to run in that direction. Click the screen to shoot in that direction.

You can now shoot while backing up, by tilting the phone one way while clicking an enemy in the other direction.

So this is effectively equivalent to a "normal" game with the always-in-play ability: "pay 1 mana: draw 1 card".

How does that balance compared to other games? How much mana does "draw one card" usually cost?

It's cool, Madagascar will survive.

Wild Speculation

The F-35 is necessary because it performs a job that the A-10 can no longer do: siphon billions of dollars from the US, Canadian, and European taxpayer into the hands of explicitly designated special interests.

Yes, more or less.

Also - I'm explicitly trying to avoid having maneuvers ever refer to specific weapons.

Right now, the Shield has been revamped to halve damage, rather than increase armor:

You may Use this Shield when this Arm is damaged to reduce each Weapon's damage to this Arm by half, and ignore any damage to this Arm in excess of its Armor. You may only mount one Physical Weapon per arm.

If you have a horcrux, then you aren't killed when your past-self attempts to murder you (since the horcrux protects you from actually dying). If you aren't murdered, then you can't produce a horcrux.

Therefore, the entire sequence of events fails self-consistency, and clearly something will happen to prevent the whole process from unfolding as desired.

However. Note that RedPill will give betas the power to become alpha, but it will NOT give omegas the power to stop being omegas.

/omega.

/kill me.

But... WHY does the porridge-bird lay his egg in the air?

Well, the symbol for health is a heart; the symbol for losing health is a heart with a slash through it.

it's effectively a 0*; certain weapons might make that an automatic hit as part of their * effect, but by default it's just a *.

Yes, lots! Here's the breakdown so far:

Your character, equipment, and class are all represented by poker cards. You have one two-sided card that represents your character's base stats; you then have one card for each piece of equipment your character is wearing (characters can wear up to one Helm item, one Armor item, one Boots item, one Accessory item, and up to two Hands worth of Weapons and/or Shield). Then you have a Class deck, which contains your basic Class card and your initial Class Feat, and also contains a set of 16 purchasable Class Feats which you earn via XP. Each Class Feat costs between 1 and 4 XP; a typical adventure will earn you 1-3 XP.

Characters are defined by 8 stats on their character card, plus 1 from armor:

Combat Stats:

• Health - your health is the number of hearts of damage you can take before you are killed.
• Stamina - your stamina is the amount of fatigue / mana you can expend before you must rest.
• Speed - your speed is the number of squares you can move per move action; you can spend one fatigue to double this.
• Defense - your defense is how hard it is for monsters to hit you.

Skills:

• Might - your might determines your ability to break down doors, lift heavy objects, and perform other feats of strength and agility.
• Will - your will determines your ability to resist mental and magical effects, manipulate or bolster the mood of others, or intimidate the weak.
• Perception - your perception determines your ability to notice hidden objects and traps.
• Knowledge - your knowledge determines your ability to solve puzzles and rememeber lore.

Equipment:

• Armor - Armor comes from equipment rather than being an innate character trait; each point of Armor allows you to ignore one heart of damage from an attack, unless that attack has Pierce or Bash. If your armor reduces an attack to 0 damage, it has no effect on you.

Monsters, Treasure, and Monster Tactics are also represented by cards - Monster Tactics are a deck of cards that reveal what the monsters are doing each turn (so you don't need a GM! the game is 100% co-op). A 'scenario' will instruct the players how to build each room of the dungeon, and then the players run through that room and turn the page to reveal the next room once the scenario tells them they can. It will also say how many of each type of treasure (Orichalcum, Mithril or Adamantine) to place on the map, and how many of each type of monster (Construct, Draconic, Infernal, Mercenary, Natural, or Undead). Each type of monster has its own Tactic deck that describes how all monsters of that type behave each turn.

Depends on the creature - big, slow things typically have a Defense of 0 or 1; really fast, slippery things can have a Defense of up to 3-4. I'd put '2' as the average for reasonably-sized humanoid threats. Here's my current design spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtLZS-9Ti47_dFVfVVo0UV9PZVF5QXo5bUpHVFVXSVE&usp=drive_web#gid=0

Generally no more than +2/-2 by any particular feat. There are a FEW +3 feats, but those are typically resource-intensive to use.

Hrm. That does, unfortunately, force me to ditch one of my primary design goals - that it would be possible to TL;DR the rules and still get a good sense of how to play.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu0scA8kqHQ&feature=kp

He's talking about how we USED to warehouse and utilize black people, before we used prison.

I think you could simplify a lot if Aim was a weapon itself and not some kind of Pit Fight

Well, that breaks one of the core mechanics of the game - instead of an "attack phase" like in Magic, each Strike (red) card creates an attack, and then provides a bonus to that attack. There's currently ten Strike cards:

• Aim - lets you pick which section to deal damage to
• Area Saturation - your missiles do less damage, but deal damage even if they miss
• Barrage - gain a spread of damage bonuses if you attack with several (usually small) weapons
• Charge - lets you move closer when you declare the attack
• Critical Hit - destroys one of your enemy's weapons if it hits (they pick which)
• Disrupt - lets you cancel one of your enemy's stay-in-play Maneuver effects (you pick which)
• Knockdown - your opponent can play one fewer maneuvers this turn
• Point-Blank Shot - you can all your weapons at Contact Range, even if they normally can't hit at Contact Range
• Smash - trade Accuracy for Damage with one Physical weapon
• Suppressing Fire - trade Damage for reducing Reaction with your Ballistic weapons

If you don't have any of those cards in your hand, you can play any of your Maneuvers face-down as a "basic Strike" and get to shoot, but you won't get any of those listed bonuses.

Likewise, Movement cards each let you move, but also give you a bonus that occurs when you do so (or, like an MtG Enchantment, give you a bonus that stays in play after you've done so). If you don't have a good Movement card in your hand, you can always play any Maneuver face-down as a "basic Move" and get to move, but you don't get any spiffy bonus.

So the basic conceit of the game's Maneuver system is, "there's two basic actions you can take: moving and shooting. You can always perform a basic version of these actions with any card, OR you can play a specific card for its listed purpose and get its bonus effect applied to that action."

Merging the weapons with the strike cards (and presumably merging some of the non-weapon utility equipment with the movement cards) would break the game in a lot of ways, because Maneuvers are how the game randomizes outcome. Once you have a weapon, it's on your 'mech and visible until it gets blown off. Weapons are (in MtG terms) 'permanents', while Maneuvers are 'spells', and they interact to produce an action.

That's roughly what the game is already doing, but a little simpler. (Also, the "build from the ground up, get more add-ons later" was something we tried in earlier builds, it didn't scan nearly as well as "start with a fully-loaded mech and slam into each other")

nod I, too, have been itching for that game for years. I just need to really grasp WHERE to simplify.

nod yeah, that matches my intuition - the problem is, HOW to simplify? Which things specifically do I want to cut out of each bit?

So, to sum up the past 3 posts: you can fit your entire combat mechanics on about 2 pages if you use cards; just use "Equipment" card which has specific rules for the equipment printed on it, and "Action" / "Reaction" cards which have specific rules for how that Action / Reaction plays out, and let the interactions between the cards determine the flow. Choose suitably evocative names for your Actions, and it actually reads pretty well.

I've now played one of my Tiger's three Maneuvers for the round, and my opponent has played one of their Marksman's two Maneuvers (although their Marksman gets an additional two Strikes after its two standard Maneuvers) - but what just happened, narratively?

Well, I Charged at my opponent, swinging my Axe and spewing a hail of bullets from my Rotary Cannon, bursting forward using my Tiger's leaping legs, and fired my Jet Pack to close a staggering six hundred meters in under a second. My opponent quickly Broke Away in reaction, narrowly avoiding the swing of my Axe, but still took a full burst of Rotary Cannon fire to the face and legs.

Now it's his turn. He plays an Overcharge, backing up a step as he does so. (Overcharge is a Movement Maneuver, so it automatically includes the ability to Advance or Retreat - just like Charge, a Strike Maneuver, automatically included the ability to Use weapons to deal damage). Overcharge says that each of his Energy Weapons deals half its damage (round down) to him; since each of his three Particle Cannons has a damage of 3, they'll each deal 1 damage to the section of his Marksman that they're mounted in. Luckily, he has a Thermal Alloy mounted, which halves all Energy damage. Since half of 1 (round down) is zero, he takes no damage from the Overcharge.

I have no appropriate Responses to a Movement Maneuver, so his Action is over. Narratively, my opponent began stepping backwards slowly, as a bright Yamato Cannon-style glow of charged particles begins emanating from the barrel of each of his Particle Cannon - and immense billows of steam begin spewing from the seams in his Thermal Alloy, releasing heat that would otherwise have melted some of his armor.

If he hits me at Short range with all three of those Particle Cannon, I'll be taking 30 damage to the face - even more if he uses those Capacitor Arrays. That will vaporize my Mech in one hit, so I need to do something before he can pull that off. I look at my hand, and see a Take Cover, a Counterattack, and a Critical Hit. Take Cover seems like an excellent idea, so I play that, closing back into Contact range as I do so. I immediately draw a Dodge to replace it. My opponent obviously wants to respond, but they've already played two Maneuvers, so it looks like I've lucked out. Narratively, I just dove behind some handy terrain while closing the distance to him.

We both start play by laying out our Mechs and shuffling our Maneuver cards. Then we look at our Pilots. Since we each have a Tactics skill of 3, we each draw 3 Maneuver cards into our hands. I draw a Charge, a Take Cover, and a Counterattack. We begin 3 spaces away from each other, at the edge of Long range.

My Brash Teenager has a Reaction skill of 3, while my opponent's Elite Sniper has a Reaction skill of 1. Since mine's higher, I get to go first. Since my Tiger gives me a free move on my first action, I decide to go all-in and play the Charge. Before either of us do anything else, I draw another Maneuver card to replace the Charge that I'm playing. I draw a Critical Hit.

Charge is a Strike, so the first thing I do is declare which weapons I'm Striking with. I choose my Rotary Cannon and my Axe, and turn them sideways to show that I'm Using them. Then, I read the card I'm playing: Charge says "Advance one step as you perform this Strike". So, I move one step closer, into Short range. Additionally, my Tiger says "When you perform your first Maneuver after Readying, you may Advance or Retreat one additional step." Since I want to get even closer so I can hit with my Axe, I'm going to Advance another step. Now I'm only one step away from my opponent - not quite close enough. So, I declare that I'm Using my Jet Pack's special ability to Advance an additional step, bringing me directly into Contact range with my opponent's Marksman.

My opponent checks his hand, and plays a Break Away to Retreat one step, back out of Contact range and into Short range. Since I have no Response that can Respond to a Break Away, this finishes the Action.

We're at Short Range (but only one frustrating space away from Contact), so my Axe is automatically going to miss. My Rotary Cannon, on the other hand, can hit at Contact AND Short range. It's a Ballistic weapon, and my Brash Teenager has a Ballistic Skill of 1, and neither of us have played anything that would modify my weapons' Accuracy - so the Rotary Cannon is going to hit, dealing 3 damage to my opponent. He chooses to assign 2 damage to his Marksman's Torso, and 1 damage to its Legs. Now that the Strike is over, I note that my Rotary Cannon says "Ready this weapon after each Strike" - so I turn it back vertically to show that it's Ready to be Used again.

I've built a deck around the Brash Teenager pilot, and the Tiger chassis. I've mounted an Axe and a Flamethrower on the Goliath's left arm, a Rotary Cannon on the Right Arm, and a Jet Pack on the Torso. I also have a deck of 15 Maneuver Cards: two Charges, two Critical Hits, two Aims, a Flank, a Take Cover, two Dodges, two Defensive Rolls, and a Counterattack.

My opponent is going for a different strategy. They've brought a Marksman piloted by an Elite Sniper, and they've mounted one Particle Cannon and two Capacitor Arrays on each arm, and a Thermal Alloy and a third Particle Cannon on the Torso. They also have 15 Maneuver cards, but I don't know which ones they chose yet.

Here's how my game, MechBrawl!, runs combat.

In MechBrawl, there are no dice. Everything is handled by cards. There are four kinds of cards in MechBrawl:

Your Pilot card determines your basic skills. In MechBrawl, there are four weapons skills: Energy Weapons, Ballistic Weapons, Missile Weapons and Physical Weapons - and two non-weapon skills: Reaction and Tactics.

Your Pilot has a deck of 15 Maneuver cards, of which you can't have more than 2 with the same name. Combat is resolved by playing Maneuver cards against each other.

Then you have your Chassis card, which is the 'mech itself, and various Weapon cards, which represent weapons and equipment mounted on the 'mech.

So, here's what a game of MechBrawl looks like:

being a person.

This is how you lose the Mandate of Heaven, folks.

I understand that the intent of this story is as the eternally faceted alternatives of fanfiction rather than as an argument

As an aside:

This is my story-as-an-argument on the subject; at least, until I acquire a new understanding about consciousness and identity. It's a brief fanfiction for Bridge of Birds, which is an amazing fairy tale.

nod fair enough, and I suppose that if "moving on" means anything other than Oblivion, then there very clearly IS an afterlife of some kind (most people seem to count "reincarnation" as a form of Afterlife).

That said, in keeping with most literary tradition, we never get to see it.

The canonical Harry Potter universe certainly does have an afterlife, which is portrayed quite accurately to canon here.

To be fair, I don't consider Limbo to be an "afterlife". King's Cross Station, and Hermione's woods here, are an abstraction - a representation of a liminal space between life and death. They're a metaphor your brain wraps around the process of "moving on".

Harry[Rowlings] got King's Cross Station because that was the place where the greatest journey of his life had begun, where the most profound changes had happened to him. In his head, it was the canonical representation of "leaving your life behind for something new".

If there's an actual Afterlife in Harry Potter, it has yet to be shown or described. Wherever that last train goes, or wherever Hermione's path beyond the river leads, it is (for them) the ultimate Unknown. Maybe wizards get some awesome heaven. Maybe they get some kind of hell. Maybe they wake up in Atlantis and take off their simulation-interface. Maybe they reincarnate. We can only speculate.

But here, in the space between, a simple choice can be made: go on, or go back.

No time is passing here. Maybe an abstract representation of time-passage is perceived, but it is no more real than the gleaming white edifice of King's Cross or the pale, misty woods by the brook. Or rather, "your mind makes it real".

Limbo isn't an afterlife; it's an abstract representation of the place where that choice is made. Harry[Rowlings] and Hermione[Ialdabaoth] have made a choice, somewhere in the timelessness where the abstract representation of their choice-making algorithms formally exist - beyond any material implementation of those algorithms.

But the Harry that existed at the moment between 'Avadra' and 'Kedavera' was not a Harry that could just 'move on', and neither is my implementation of HPMOR*.Hermione.

Of course, merely "not moving on" isn't enough - something has to reimplement that algorithm, or it's just so much Platonic wankery. Harry[Rowlings] had an ace-in-the-hole, in that he had a "back-up soul" grafted to him when he got his scar. Hermione - the abstract, mathematical description of Hermione's knowledge and choices and desires and perspectives - has Harry[Eliezer] working on something with less Ex and more Deus and Machina.

Riddle[Rowlings] had six powerful artifacts, each holding a back-up soul, plus the one he stuck in Harry. Once he blew those, his mere refusal to 'move on' wasn't enough - he's timelessly stuck with the desire to be reimplemented and no way to achieve it.

nod

I don't know if I can express this properly, but I do understand. Completely.

I had a friend. His name happened to be Chris Durango, but we all knew him as Harlequin.

He died of cancer when he was 23 and I was 19. He died in the most fitting way I could imagine - screaming and cursing and crying that it was entirely unfair, and that he should have had a long life spreading cynicism and wry observations among his friends.

We had a long, ongoing, utterly delightful philosophical conversation that lasted four years, that I will never be able to finish with him.

He will never see that I managed to claw my way out of my depression, or that I fell back into it later, or any of the ways in which I've come to respect his viewpoints about... well, most of everything.

He would have had so many wonderfully acerbic things to say about cellphones, and ubiquitous computing, and gender roles, and how weird the 21st century has got. I can't even imagine half of what he would have said, but it would have been brilliant, and I will never know. Just as importantly, HE will never know, because he isn't here anymore.

So, with absolutely no punches pulled, FUCK death.

That said... I'm not quite you. Reality judged me and found me wanting; maybe because I was forced to endure a fundamentalist Christian elementary schools and public high schools and a backwards hick town with no stimulation until my mom died at 23 and I managed to escape; maybe because I wasn't born with the same degree of neurochemical regulation that your brain was graced with; but sometimes I choose to escape, because in the real world I am powerless and terrified and alone, and there is NOTHING I can do about it except fantasize about something better.

But would you buy a used spaceship from this man?

That's all definitely arguments in favor of not believing this story. I'll attempt to update my self-image.

(note: if you wish to continue the attack, "no you won't" will probably be the most effective.)

EDIT: On a more pragmatic level, is there a good way for me to know if I'm actually any good at anything? What are appropriate criteria to determine whether I deserve to have pride in myself and my abilities?

I will die.

Alright, you're right. I'm a depressive piece of shit Omega who thinks he can improve. I got nothing. Sorry to bother you all.

huh.

What, in your view, would be something actually worth sharing? Where did I miss the mark?

https://twitter.com/heightismwatch

nod I intend on signing up for therapy next month, as soon as my insurance kicks in. I've been intending to go into therapy for the past 10 years, but no job + no insurance + living in the United States = no help.

I've tried that; the problem is that I was trained to accept that physical proof is irrelevant. (In fact, physical proof just makes me MORE anxious, because it historically meant that the denial of my reality was more likely to turn violent.)

Do you believe in slavery?

What do you mean by "believe"? Do I believe slavery happens? Of course I do. Do I believe slavery 'should' happen? I don't know, what power do I have to stop it?

Well, he's only doing it for himself; why should he care what happens to those who aren't as successful as he is?

Well, one operating theory is that I seek them out; I think an alternately plausible theory is that I never learned how to stand up for myself, so abusive types tend to see me as someone they can easily exploit.

How did you live with yourself, knowing how much 'security theatre' bullshit you were responsible for promoting?

Too much edge, not enough thinking. Men seeing unfair situations and deciding to fix them is the reason we don't live as malnourished serfs on some baron's land anymore, offering up our wives in jus primae noctis.

Worked pretty well for the baron, didn't it?

Feminists have manipulated the laws in this country to their own advantage, but that doesn't mean those laws can never be changed back to some semblance of justice, or that we should just snicker contemptuously at men who are victimized by them instead of fixing them.

There's that "should" again. I'm afraid you've caught me in a particularly nihilistic mood. Care to explain how "should" is relevant without the force to back it up, and why anyone capable of wielding that force might care about those who aren't?

Heh. Man, do you have no idea.

Take that much-needed sick day.

Did, got fired for it.

Confront that co-worker who sends you inappropriate jokes via company e-mail and ask them to stop.

Did, got punched out by that coworker.

Take your vacation days and do something YOU want to do with them.

Did, lost most of my friends.

The first step is learning to take care of ourselves, really.

Really, I think for me the first step is learning to take care of myself without people punishing me for it.

yeah; I'm 5'8" and 135 lbs. I intend to start lifting once I can set up at home; I tend to avoid gyms as a personal safety thing.

Your parents didn't give you the tools to be an effective adult. You didn't get to do the social fumbling when it was socially appropriate, and so now you're stuck having trouble with the kinds of things others find simple.

Yes, but in my mind when that happens to other people it's tragic, but when it happens to me its deserved. The world doesn't owe me a living; it doesn't owe me sympathy, or oxygen, or food, or shelter, or socialization. And if I need those things, that just makes me needy, not deserving.

That's really, really hard to do when your willpower budget isn't replenishing.

No one can fill it but you

...which can be really, really hard to do when your willpower budget isn't replenishing.

Just like "it takes money to make money", it takes willpower to regain willpower.

That's really, really hard to do when your willpower budget isn't replenishing.

Different people at different times; I've been denied unemployment / food stamps / health insurance, for example; I've been denied roommate situations, and denied waivers of medical bills; ultimately, as a male it's not really my place to ask for things, even if my survival is at stake.

Thinking you never need any help is ego-centric, foolish, and defensive.

Yes, but whenever I have asked for help, I've been called needy, entitled, and unworthy. I KNOW I need help; I just also know I don't deserve it.

Also: Here is the alpha solution to alimony.

http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquarter/wealthy-gop-donor-gets-lawmaker-to-write-bill-to-help-with-child-support-payments-b99182267z1-239776351.html

I regret that I have nothing positive to say in response to this, and it doesn't seem particularly polite to say something vicious or rude.

"Reaching out for help from others" seems like about the least masculine thing in the world. My natural instinct is that you either do it 100% by your own bootstraps, or you deserve to be destroyed by those who can.

No, I tend to be rather distrustful of therapists. I've had some very, very nasty experiences with therapy, both as a child and as an adult.

Well, in my case, for example, the problem is that as I become dissatisfied with myself and my life, I hit my threshold for self-destruction and self-annihilation well before I hit my threshold for self-improvement. I've spent as much effort as I can muster on changing those thresholds, but it appears that I simply can't be bothered - which, in my mind, means that I deserve it.

The issue isn't with posting; it's with expecting things to feel any better.

It seems to me that depression, if it isn't merely weakness and desire to whine, has a very real effect on one's ability to maintain frame, to desire to self-improve, and to generally motivate.

There is no justice. People bought the idea that there should be, which suckered them into allowing alimony. Now people are using alimony to promote injustice. That's how all laws and morals work.

It's justifiable because the law allows it. She had the chance, and she took it. Life is under no obligation to be fair or even possible; the strong survive for a time while the weak perish.

What were you expecting?

How's this: life's tough and unfair, and you either overcome it or die. Alimony and feminism and such are just more things that you have to overcome before (or until) they kill you.

Life doesn't care if the tests it throws you are fair, and it doesn't care if it didn't prepare you for them. It doesn't even care if it lied to you about them. It just fucks you over, and then you're done.

The fact that someone is failing should earn contempt, not pity.

I don't know how true this is. I've found that if a girl has orbiters, being in her proximity (even if you aren't interested) will cause them to start attempting to provoke physical violence.

yes, really.

I've been tazered and maced, but not slapped.

Well, yeah. Power does what it wants.

...they emasculated Baphomet.

I'm pretty sure it's more "one law for small companies and no law for big banks".

Customization has always been an important part of Battletech, so much so that the board game doesn't even have hardpoints.

However, even in Battletech there are limits to what you can customize without producing an entirely new chassis.

Also, I see no reason why hardpoints can't be "unlocked" as Efficiencies, allowing players to advance towards more customizable chassis.

I dunno, I kinda like skinny g -- DAAAAYAM.

Learn about mental frame -Read up on NLP. Read every book in Redpill books. Lift weights and learn discipline. Decide who you want to be... and how you are going to add value to other people. Read biographies of people who are successful. Look at people and what they are really doing, and not what they say they are doing.

I already do that to the maximum of my ability, and it's not working. I picked up NLP as a teenager (I came to it from Robert Anton Wilson, so that should tell you a bit about my weirdness).

Become good at something.

I'm damn good at computer programming. I'm damn good at business analysis and process improvement. I'm damn good at makeshift engineering. I know CPR / basic triage, and can actually keep my head in an emergency well enough to use it. I am the sort of man who runs towards the fire. I can write very, very well. I can draw pretty well, and am actively working on improving my art skills. I can sculpt. I can carve woodwork. I can work leather. I can cast metal. I'm learning (slowly) to be a blacksmith. If it came down to it, I could probably code a CNC to stamp an AK-47 out of bare metal and piping and assemble it. I understand more chemistry, biology, physics, and psychology than most people who have a PhD in it, I just never got the credentials because they're a bunch of shit and I've never seen anything from the people who did get the credentials to tell me that they or their credentials are worth my respect.

I am good at a fucking TON of things, but that never translates to being confident that I'm good at things. I am constantly out-competed by people whose skill is of inferior quality, but who are willing to hide their flaws and play up their strengths, and cover it all in a layer of narcissistic bullshit.

I am fucking ALLERGIC to bullshit, even though it's quite obviously what makes the world go 'round.

I can confidently say that if there was a zombie apocalypse tomorrow, and I could get more than 20 people to fucking shut up and listen to me, I could reforge civilization for them with my own two fucking hands.

But I can't get more than 20 people to fucking shut up and listen to me, because no one gives a shit about competence. They care about confidence, and appearance, and bullshit.

And I'm telling you, I don't know how to stop being allergic to bullshit. I'm totally willing to learn how to sling bullshit if that's what it takes, but first I have to stop being allergic to it. And I need a game plan for that, or I'm just going to keep self-sabotaging.

Not necessarily; some of us have sufficient mental impairment that even our own decisions aren't "completely up to us". And ultimately, if one wants to really swallow the bitter truth, men will always be in a Pareto (80/20) curve - only the top performers will have any actual value. If you can't reach that level, and you've sustained enough damage that your own mental processes are no longer reliable enough to trust self-mastery, and you don't have enough willpower to push through, how do you push through anyways?

Sex doesn't really interest me, especially not "notches on my bedpost"; what I'm after is respect and prestige, and I don't see either of those as attainable, even if I pick up some of your techniques. Has anyone worked on these problems?

EDIT: Actually, let me reframe that.

If it was "completely up to me", I wouldn't need a red pill, would I?

For me, "maintaining frame" is my primary deficit that causes me to fail everywhere else. I can't keep pushing through with my exercise routine because I self-sabotage. I can't keep up my self-improvement because I ultimately can't convince myself that I deserve to improve.

The thing that attracted me to TRP in the first place was that you guys are the only place offering actual, TACTICAL advice about any of this shit.

So, what is the tactical advice for building a frame from scratch? I've been told all my life that I'm a victim, and I'm tired of it, but I have no other mindset to fall back on. I can't even describe the lay of the obstacle course without telling myself that I'm just "making excuses" and "if I wanted to change I would have already". Fuck, I can't go five seconds without telling myself what a piece of shit, worthless loser I am, and how I'm a loser PRECISELY BECAUSE I can't stop telling myself what a loser I am, and how I'm a loser because I can't stop telling myself that I'm a loser because I can't stop telling myself... and it's ridiculous, but that doesn't make it stop. So what makes it stop?

I need actual, tactical advice that doesn't sound like this:

http://anticache.img8.joyreactor.com/pics/post/comics-buttersafe-help-drowning-453248.jpeg

So what's the game plan?

A question from someone very interested in your techniques, but somewhat trepidatious of your conclusions:

What room is there for "damaged" men? Suicidal depression, PTSD, physical and mental disability, autism, etc.? Given that men are the disposable gender, should we just write ourselves off if we've "hit the wall" on self-improvement and are still lacking?

It.

This is true! I once left a baby on a counter, and another baby spontaneously appeared, then they both burst into flames.

When I was 23, I moved from Bakersfield, CA to Tempe, AZ. I packed everything that would fit in my little Honda Del Sol and headed east on Highway 58.

Somewhere in Nevada I got lost, and wound up driving up a narrow canyon road at 1 in the morning. In the rain. When I say "narrow", you have to understand that this was the sort of road you'd expect to see mules traversing, not cars. Forty foot sheer cliff going up on my right. Seventy foot sheer cliff going down on my left. It was paved, sure, but there was no guardrail, and the dotted yellow line through the middle seemed like someone's idea of a joke.

Suddenly, I see a car's headlights illuminating the road ahead of me; motherfucker is doing 75 and on my side of the road. He notices me just in time and swerves to the outside, so I swerve to the inside and he whoooshes on past. And then my headlight clips the rock face.

Next thing I know, my car is doing a 720 spin, and that blind turn - with no guardrail and a 70 foot dropoff - is looming up ahead (and then to my left, and then behind, and then to my right, and then ahead again...), getting closer and closer. I wind up pointing forward again just as I reach the edge, brakes squealing... and then ch-thunk my front wheels are off the edge of the cliff.

I come to a rest, Wile E. Coyote style, with my car see-sawing on the edge of this canyon, the headlights flooding into the little wash below. I shit you not, there are coyotes on the bottom of that canyon, and they are staring up at me. In my memory, one of them even licks his lips.

At this point I say "fuck this" and try to back off, but... front wheel drive. Where are my front wheels? Off the edge of the cliff. FM soon-to-be-over L.

I roll down the back window (Del Sols have a rear window that you can roll down), unbuckle my seat belt, and start to shift up out of my seat to climb out the back of my car; coyotes can have my fucking laptop and clothes. Nope! Car starts leaning forward when I shift position, and slides a little further off the edge.

So I settle niiiiice and slow back into my seat, grab my cellphone, and dial 911. Barely have enough service (this was back in 1998), but eventually I get a connection.

I have to explain which road I think I'm on, and they say they'll send a police car and a tow truck.

I then wait ONE AND A HALF HOURS on the edge of that damn cliff until they show up, while the coyotes wait for dinner.

Ever since that day, I drive like a grandma. I no longer care when I get anywhere, so long as I get there in one piece.

Just play a bit o' music and he falls straight asleep.

^{...I shouldn't have told you that.}

Here's an atheist prayer I've used with sincerity:

I am thankful for the food that we are about to eat.

I thank the farmers that planted the vegetables and raised the animals, and hope that their labors were fulfilling and worthwhile.

I thank the animals for dying that we may eat, and hope that their lives were not unpleasant.

I thank the harvesters that gathered the vegetables, and hope that they were treated well and paid well for their labors.

I thank the drivers and pilots and packers who brought the food to market, and who laid it out for us to purchase, and hope that they were treated well and paid well for their labors.

I thank our host for working hard to buy the ingredients, and I thank the cook for preparing them. May all your labors be mixed with joy and fulfillment.

And I thank my friends for being here to share it with me. May we all grow closer to each other, in friendship and in understanding.

So Endomorph gets CON-related bonuses, and Ectomorph gets DEX-related bonuses, which leaves STR-related bonuses for Mesomorph, right?

Our society's values have gone out of sync with our government's and economy's practices.

This happens whenever culture progresses - government jobs, especially enforcement jobs, will always attract the more conservative members of society, and bureaucracies will always crystalize the views of the people who created them. Thus, people who care most about 'law and order' will be exposed to a subculture where 'law and order' trumps fairness and common human decency, and where the proper reaction to the larger culture's abandonment of their values is a siege mentality.

Even the concept of "decency" is co-opted - "decency" becomes about preventing women from accessing medical care because we disapprove of the procedure, or preventing the wrong kind of people from marrying, or jailing 15 year olds for admiring their own bodies, or gang-raping women with drug detection tools because we're afraid someone somewhere might enjoy themselves too much if we let them ingest the wrong substances.

A big part of the problem is fear, of course. As long as you're afraid of your kids doing drugs, you're part of a chain of approval that lends force to the people who gang-raped this women. As long as you're afraid of your car being broken into, you're part of a chain of approval that lends force to the people who break into houses and shoot dogs. As long as you're afraid of your children being abducted, you're part of a chain of approval that lends force to destroying a teenager's life because they peed in the bushes outside a party.

It's reasonable to take precautions, but it's not reasonable to let people tell you what to be afraid of. Teach yourself statistics, and learn to read the actual numbers. When a news reporter says "two hundred and fifteen murders occurred in the last year in the greater metro area", stop and ask yourself how many humans live in that area. Pull up a map, and look at where those murders occurred. Then ask yourself what the likelihood is that a murder will happen in your neighborhood, and what you can do to prevent it without involving thugs with badges.

Of course, the deepest fear is fear of your neighbors. The more afraid of the outside world you are, the more insular you become, and the more queer and strange the neighbors seem. How often do you just hang out and talk with them? Do you ever just invite them over for dinner? When the weather gets warmer, try having barbeques in the back yard and inviting everyone over.

Robust communities are the solution to this sort of siege mentality. When a SWAT team breaks down a door in a robust community, it makes the news, and the popularity of local SWAT teams goes down a notch. As support for the siege mentality is eroded at the local level, the state and federal level eventually lose the foundation of normalcy that they've built these atrocities on, and bald-face abuses like this become harder and harder to get away with.

But it starts with meeting your neighbor.

I just read the title to this, and immediately pondered how they would find this out; then realized that they must be recording the name-sounds and then playing them back to the Dolphins later.

And then I immediately thought of the Predator movie, and wondered just how creeped out those dolphins must be.

I did my best guys, i spend way too long trying to make ends meet.

Sure, but so did the hobo.

nod I'll concede that it was a gross oversimplification, and possibly an irresponsible one.

People aren't that dumb. They can have the triune brain explained to them and still understand, except maybe you...

In which case, it seems like an explanation of the triune brain, pointing out which bits I got wrong, would be helpful all around. Even if I'm not worth it and am too stupid to understand (which I will gladly concede), the other readers in the thread should be able to.

I said it was a metaphor, and the "advice" I gave was to go see a therapist and ask about CBT, which has a statistically higher rate of success at treating PTSD than any other currently-approved therapy. If I was talking to a non-military person, I would have used a different metaphor. The brain is a huge complicated thing, but understanding in broad strokes is far better than the default folk psychology assumption, which is invariably "I am a bad person and just need to have more willpower". I think WillingtoNegotiate et.al. are smart enough to understand the difference between metaphor, and there literally being two little dudes in their head with maps and a steering wheel. Stop being butthurt.

"Go see a therapist and ask about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" is bad advice?

Well, the problem with that is "accepting that the situation was normal given the context" is Neo's job, and Amy doesn't trust Neo's judgment anymore.

Neo is called the "Neocortex" because it's the stuff that humans have that animals don't (or at least, don't have as much of). The Amygdala is part of the "animal" brain, so good luck teaching it anything too complex for your dog to understand.

Basically, what you need to do is teach Neo to make better decisions, and teach Amy when to shut up and give Neo a few minutes to think. These are separate training tasks, and both are pretty damn intensive.

On the other hand, there are some promising drugs coming out, which basically use chemicals to accomplish what you just described. But we have no idea how well they work or what the side effects are, so we're still doing trials on animals to make sure they don't rot people's brains or turn them into Reavers or something else horrible.

Here's an article about it: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2195982/Drug-stop-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-way-successful-test-mice.html

Btw, thanks for the gold, somebody!

Investors would show up begging to hand China all their money for whatever technology allowed them to get a rover from Sinus Iridium to Tranquility Base with enough power and functionality left to grab the flag.

I'm glad to help!

What you need to do now is, get yourself to a therapist who does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It's basically like kicking Amy and Neo back into Command Training exercises until they prove they can work together as a functional team again.

How much do you know about the human brain?

To use a metaphor:

Your brain has a bunch of different parts to it - three of those parts are called the "neocortex", the "amygdala", and the "cerebellum".

Neo's a smooth operator, and always has a plan if you just give him a few damn minutes to think about it.

Amy's prone to freak-out, and tends to solve everything by either hitting it REALLY hard, or running away from it REALLY fast (aka fight-or-flight).

The cerebellum is like the driver's seat for the body. The way Amy and Neo work is, Amy sits in the driver's seat with her hands on the wheel, and Neo sits shotgun with all our maps and mission specs in his lap. With me so far?

So, when you're having a freak-out, what's basically happening is Amy has gone bugshit and is slamming on the gas, spinning the wheel and bugging the fuck out NOW, while Neo's sitting in the passenger seat shouting something about minefields and going off-mission and how bad the CO's gonna yell at us when we get back to base.

In an ideal brain, Neo's got one more stripe than Amy, and Amy respects the chain of command. What you've got in PTSD is a broken chain of command, because one time Amy followed Neo's orders and things got REALLY crazy, so now when things look like they're about to get crazy Amy doesn't trust Neo's orders anymore.

And you can't just put Neo in the driver's seat. Check out this picture:

http://mybrainnotes.com/amygdala-prefrontal-cortex.jpg

The "prefrontal cortex" is Neo, and the "amygdala" is Amy. That weird looking tree-thing in the bottom back is the cerebellum. Neo just flat-out can't reach the cerebellum without going through Amy.

So, you're going to have to fix your brain's chain of command. You're going to have to work out some system to remind Amy to listen to Neo, BEFORE Amy decides that Neo's full of shit and she's bugging them out of there.

This will take a LOT of time and effort, but remembering that it's a chain of command issue should help.

money wins.

That's the wrong framework; it makes it sound like we can fix this by moving away from a capitalistic / money-based economic system.

The correct framework is "power wins", and it's been that way since the first self-replicating organism started snaking through the primordial slime.

Fuck you for being born poor.

This is the actual morality of the world, and you can embrace it or be driven mad trying to change it.

Kill yourself.

A few gems I've saved:

"The problem of badly behaved women would best be solved by coercively subjecting them to the authority of well behaved men. Some women would be mistreated as a result, but fewer would be badly behaved."

"Female psychology and sexuality is such as to make the concept of marital rape meaningless. Females are never happy putting out sexually in the context of equality even if they volunteer to do so. Sex outside a relationship is bad for a woman whether it is called rape or not, and conversely, not only is sex inside a relationship good for a woman, it is better if the relationship is one in which she lacks power.

The relevant difference, the important difference, is not female empowerment versus female disempowerment, but permanent relationship versus random sex. If coercion is applied to cause random sex, it is rape, harms women, harms society, and harms good men. If coercion is applied to prevent random sex and ensure sex inside a permanent relationship, it is not rape, it benefits women, benefits good men, and benefits society."

No, Hollywood is exempt. See: Thora Birch in American Beauty (she was 17 at the time).

Look. Anyone that young is clearly too young to know better than to be photographed, and anyone who is that old is clearly old enough to know better than to photograph a kid who's too young to know better.

Chrono Trigger's story and Final Fantasy:Crystal Chronicle's realtime multiplayer combat system. (EDIT: Or, if you wanted to go SUPER retro, Secret of Mana's).

Esteemed sirs,

It has been my pleasure to ask several celebrities the following question; some have even answered. Given the quality of your body of work, and especially given the propositions advanced in The Meaning of Life, I would especially appreciate hearing yours.

Which version of quantum mechanics do you believe to be more likely to be true: the Copenhagen Statistical Model, the Everett-Wheeler Many Worlds model, the Penrose Gravitationally Mediated Collapse Model, or the "What The @!*# Do We Know" Consciousness Causes Collapse Model?

In a perfect world I'll live long enough to write ALL THE BOOKS.

It may not be a perfect world, but there are Places where many things can be traded for the color of your eyes, or the memory of your first love's kiss.

Which version of quantum mechanics do you believe to be more likely to be true - the Copenhagen Statistical Model, the Everett-Wheeler Many Worlds model, the Penrose Gravitationally Mediated Collapse Model, or the "What The @!*# Do We Know" Consciousness Causes Collapse Model?

Doctors? Of course not.

But abortions?

Blood transfusions?

Surgeries that might damage a woman's ability to bear children?

All of these have been banned or made difficult in various jurisdictions - sometimes through legal channels, other times through social channels.

Fire and floods eh? Yeah, like that'll ever happen

More like "Fire and floods, eh? Yeah, like they'd ever actually pay out if that happened."

Insurance in principle is a great idea. Insurance in practice, in the 21st century US, is a scam. Their lawyers are NOT on your side.

In my opinion the courts are right to deny parental wishes in those cases where the child will be harmed by lack of treatment.

The stupid thing here, is that the moment you allow that, you tell the cultists that all they need to do is infiltrate a political party, gain a majority, and vote in courts that will override the parental wishes of people who want to give their kids medicine.

ANYTHING you do to stop these people, can be used by the Religious Right to force their views back on you.

So now what?

And they'd none of them be missed! They'd none of them be missed!

Which are now Exxon-Mobil, BP-Amoco, and Chevron-Texaco-Shell.

It's like a T-1000.

Designing free-to-play video games, board games and card games. Probably write sci-fi and fantasy novels, maybe work on my art style until I feel confident to write / draw a few graphic novels.

All interaction whatsoever, really. It's called Darwinian natural selection.

That's because it's called "Happy Slapping" when white people do it.

TETSUOOOOO!

NAAAAAAAANTS INGONYAMAAAAAA!

Honestly, I think that craze is inevitable, but it's at least three 'Next Big Thing' cycles off. But it's definitely coming.

My predictions:

• some level of physics simulation will be involved
• it will be something shiny and new from a tech perspective, like soft-body or even fluid dynamics - something that hasn't yet shown up on handhelds
• it will be very bright, and very repetitive.

Personally, I don't understand why people insist on always emulating the "New Big Thing", instead of trying to shoot for the "Next Big Thing" themselves.

So who exactly thinks it's bad?

In general, people who don't like what's being done, and who want to declare universal "rules" about what people can and can't ethically do. Deontologists and utilitarians and such.

There's no logical connection between an event occurring (is), and you saying it was deserved (ought).

Then what IS logically connected to 'ought'? If 'ought' does not have any real effects, then in what sense is 'ought' even meaningful?

in ELI5 terms: In Catch 22, at one point someone defines Catch 22 as "We are allowed to do anything that you can't stop us from doing."

Why is this "bad"? The only explanation I've got is "Well, you wouldn't like it if someone did that to you", but that seems easily refutable by "Sure, but what could I do about it?" and "If I can't do anything about it, what does it matter how much I wouldn't like it?"

The just-world hypothesis is basically the assumption that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Just from looking at the world you can tell that this is simply not true. People get away with murder. Innocent babies die horrible deaths. Things happen to people, and the universe doesn't care about good or bad.

Well... can you explain why that makes it not true? It seems that you're saying that people getting away with murder is bad, and that innocent babies dying horrible deaths is bad - but if these things are bad, why do they still happen? And if they still happen even if we call them 'bad', then why does it matter what we call them?

So really, "poor product = failure" is a tautology. Because if people are willing to play it, it must be a passable product. There's no falsifiable claim being made, here.

Poor product = failure, pretty much all the time.

Explain Evony.

Niagra falls?

Slowly, I turned...

I know! I hope you have fun with my game.

It's a dungeon crawl. I'm saving tower defense for my Robot game :)

Neat! I've been working on an almost identical concept, although my system has pared down to a single "chassis" card and a series of mountable equipment cards:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6sutklmqzl8rkfm/9qyDmk4gc0?lst

I hope this isn't too painful: How did you get help for your depression? How did you get people to actually support you when you went through counseling and drugs, and how did you manage to pay for them?

The realization that it would take cooperation with others, and that no one understands what the fuck I'm on about.

For the religious:

If God wants a soul to be born, don't you think He will make sure they're born?

By weeding out those bodies and brains that are going to suffer or be taken advantage of BEFORE the soul has the chance to 'take root' in them, aren't we ensuring that when those souls ARE born, they're born into bodies that are actually healthy and functional and good to live in?

Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.

"Can"? Certainly. But the kind of panhandler that can make $40k a year is not the typical mentally ill homeless person who desperately needs their next meal. (Although they may be very, very good at faking it).

Remember that any time there is a group of people who legitimately need our compassion, there will be people showing up to exploit that compassion by pretending to be a part of that needy group. And remember that the fakers will always have more resources, more opportunities, and more visibility than the legitimately needy, so their stories will inevitably seem more prominent than those who truly need help - but that doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of people who ask for help aren't scamming, and do need it.

Mr. Cumberbunch, which version of Quantum Mechanics do you believe is most likely to be correct - the Copenhagen statistical interpretation, the Penrose mediated-collapse/"consciousness causes collapse" model, or the Everett-Wheeler "many-worlds" theory?

Which version of Quantum Mechanics do you think is more likely - the Everett-Wheeler "Many Worlds" interpretation, the Penrose "Consciousness Causes Collapse" model, or the Copenhagen statistical interpretation?

"It's either arbitrary or it's cruel, and either way I've got the heebie-jeebies."

Gladly!

Each of these is an answer to a particular question. The question, in ELi5 terms, is "Why does one thing happen and not another?"

Have you ever imagined that an event might have gone differently? Each "interpretation" of quantum mechanics explains a different way that the universe "decides" which events happen, and which events don't.

(But keep in mind that "quantum mechanics" deals with very, VERY tiny events - big events like the things that you notice in your own life are made out of BILLIONS of these tiny events before they become noticable).

The Copenhagen statistical interpretation basically says, "the universe rolls dice." I.e., events are ultimately totally random and unpredictable, other than to say "this event is more likely than this one". You CANNOT know which event will happen.

The Penrose interpretation is that "measurement" or "interaction" causes collapse. Many people take this a step further, and say "conscious observation causes collapse" - i.e., NOTHING ever happens unless someone is there to notice it. Some people even go further than THAT, and claim that conscious beings decide WHICH event happens, through some mysterious mystical process.

The Everett-Wheeler interpretation says "they ALL happen". Somewhen, there's a universe where you never got that job, because someone spilled a coke on your best tie just before you walked into the interview. Somewhen else, you met a beautiful girl at 19 and married her and had three kids. Somewhen else, you died from a bee sting at age seven. And so on and so on. Everything that could ever have happened, happened, but the more "likely" something is to have happened, the more "universes" or timelines there are in which that thing happened.

Does all that make sense?

Well, I've already asked Spike Lee and Jonathan Goldsmith (the most interesting man in the world), so it's got a bit of precedent. We just have to be good about asking it and then upvoting whoever asks first.

I stand corrected.

Mr. Hanks, which version of Quantum Mechanics do you believe is more likely to be an accurate interpretation of reality - the Copenhagen statistical interpretation, the Everett-Wheeler "many worlds" model, or the Penrose "consciousness causes collapse" viewpoint?

Too bad, 4th ed is fun as hell. You should look for new player who haven't played D&D long enough to develop a prejudice for a particular edition.

I second this. A good Tiefling Pyromancer/Evoker with Enlarge Spell, Hellfire Arcanist, Hellfire Blood and Hellfire Master can do absolutely brutal amounts of damage to large groups, especially if you get ahold of a Hellfire Staff at level 4. With the Hellfire Staff + Enlarge Spell, your goal is to crit-farm: make as many attack rolls as possible, and use every crit you achieve to regain an area-effect encounter spell.

MM1 and MM2 had somewhat broken monster math. MM3 got it right. Luckily, the math is incredibly easy:

http://blogofholding.com/?p=512

Haven't there been 14 and 15 year olds prosecuted for distributing child pornography when they took a nude cellphone picture of themselves?

Generally, my amygdala.

I will offer you no platitudes.

Instead, try these guys: http://rationality.org/

They might help you sort out if there's a way out of the shit, that you haven't been trained to spot yet.

This is three different questions, but I'm trying to hone in on a single question that I don't quite know how to ask. Hopefully you can understand the core idea of the question I'm trying to ask:

What do you believe separates successful game designers from unsuccessful ones? Do you think you've succeeded primarily on the strength of your ideas, or are there other skills that helped contribute to your success? What would you recommend to an unknown and unproven game designer, who has a passion for making games and who wants to see their creations played but doesn't have any name recognition or financial support yet?

Boss once threatened to kill me in front of the other employees. Everyone refused to acknowledge it.

You get up, and you go to work, and you try to act like nothing happened.

because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

listening, and helping people with their personal problems.

Be a teacher, and have sex with an underage student.

At least, according to conviction rates.

You mean, "Oh carp! Oh carp! Oh carp!"

Hey! Check out my similarly-themed game! (I've been working on it for 2 years)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6sutklmqzl8rkfm/9qyDmk4gc0?lst#lh:null--%20Generic%20Card%20Back.png

My game already has a very robust action mechanic for robot-on-robot combat; my intent was to work on the Giant Monster side at a later date. What would you say about joining forces, saving a lot of design effort, and making a pair of inter-compatible games?

• Game color scheme has been completely updated from god-awful green and black to a much more pleasing light blue with green and red highlights.

• Pilots (which represent your character) no longer have point costs, and are now perfectly balanced against each other. Point costs are now entirely for chassis and weapon cards.

• I now have icons for all the possible Pilot skills (Energy Weapons, Ballistic Weapons, Missile Weapons, Melee Weapons, Reaction, and Tactics) and their corresponding Weapon cards

• Currently playtesting a change to my range mechanic.

That'd actually be much more of a Naga thing, really.

nod

Imagery I already have in place for the Wyrm:

• It has no wings; it's middle two limbs are reduced to shark-like fins.

• Its remaining four limbs end in webbed feet, and its tail has a fan-ridge protruding on either side, to act as a paddle/rudder. It is a very good swimmer, and very good at walking on ice without slipping.

• Its dragon pearl gives it an ice breath, which functions with greater range underwater.

Bitten by a radioactive Swede?

It's not illegal if you pay the judge enough.

And whoever currently holds it, usually reacts violently when they're afraid that it's about to.

I don't. I actually often feel that I would prefer to have been aborted.

Look, power wins. That's just how it is.

The fastest? six months.

Hrm. I seem to recall Doom 3 having a config setting that turned it on, but I don't remember if that required a mod or not.

Obscure fact: the first game with visible feet was actually my Quake III mod, "Vwep3" (aka "Viz", aka "Kung Fu Quake3").

Proof (from 12 years ago): http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=49453

My own island, a brilliant plastic surgeon who lost his license, and all the third-world sex trafficking victims I could buy.

Is that evil enough?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRZ2Sh5-XuM

Because fuck you.

Granularity can be okay.

Also, here's an alternate system:

'Stat' determines your dice pool, exclusively. As "raw talent", your stat is pretty much the limit of what you can accomplish. I usually have 'Stat' range from 1 to 6 without some kind of supernatural or technological boost.

'Skill' determines how reliably you can apply that raw talent. At a Skill of 0, only a '6' is a success. At Skill 1, a roll of '5' or '6' is a success. At Skill 2, a roll of '4', '5', or '6' is a success, and so on. Obviously, 'Skill' ranges from 0 to 4.

If you want more granularity in skill, just replace the type of dice rolled. White Wolf popularized the D10 pool, which gives you a skill granularity of 0 to 9, at the cost of making unskilled players much less likely to succeed.

I have artists!

Also, a nearly-complete card game (pre-art):

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6sutklmqzl8rkfm/9qyDmk4gc0?lst#lh:null--%20Generic%20Card%20Back.png

Right now, I'm working on designs for skill icons to replace the skill names, to clean up some of the visuals and make the blocks of text shorter and faster to read. I need to figure out good icons for:

Energy weapon skill Ballistic weapon skill Missile weapon skill Physical weapon skill Reaction (dodging) skill Tactics (hand size) skill

If you go to Zahadum, you will die.

It would, at least, be honest.

Step 1: Stop thinking of humans as people.

Step 2: Allow parents to sell their children to corporations.

Step 3: Corporations decide where to send their human resource property to school, and pay for it for pure cost/benefit reasons.

Step 4: Anyone who is not valuable enough to be bought is disposed of, or (if it is economical to do so) recycled for parts.

Problem solved.

The blessed United States of America, of course. The embodiment of all righteous Power on Earth.

The sooner they die, the sooner we can take their land and drill on it.

We need to stop pussy-footing around and just declare war on poor people.

Ideas are cheap :) implementation is everything. Go for it, but make it good. (And if you want help making it, lemme know!)

That's a pretty terrible attitude. If no one is striving to make the next Braid or Super Meat Boy, then it never gets made.

So, here's the game I've been working on for 2 years.

It's an expandable card game that lets you build giant fighting robots (mecha / mechs) out of parts, and then fight them against each other.

I think it's innovative in that it gives you all the tactical options you'd normally expect from a tabletop war game, without ever requiring any assets except for poker-sized cards (and maybe counters to track damage).

The first few images in the above link are the instruction booklet; everything else is the actual cards. All of them. Front and back, for the most part. The art is still in prototype phase; I'm an okay artist, but I'm hoping for better.

Constructive criticism is very welcome. Also, I hereby give anyone in this thread permission to use these images to make a P&P version for their personal use.

It's only illegal if you get caught, and you can't get caught if you bribe the judge.

police accountability is failing in all issues, not just this one. It's one of the next hurdles we need to pass on the way towards an actually just society.

racism.

so, time to bomb Switzerland?

Mr. Lee, which version of Quantum Mechanics do you believe is more likely to be an accurate interpretation of reality - the Copenhagen statistical interpretation, the Everett-Wheeler "many worlds" model, or the Penrose "consciousness causes collapse" viewpoint?

So, we should bomb them then?

Well, if you want to do an alien game, what about trying to settle on a hostile alien world?

Your 'win condition' is crafting a stable, self-sustaining and permanently defendable settlement, while the native environment relentlessly attacks you or undermines your ability to build.

Basically, "Oregon Trail" meets "Alpha Centauri".

I said the value of diamonds and celebrities comes from tricking people. Then you overgeneralized.

nice misread.

Whoever has the biggest guns, according to our current lack of a system. World War II is the type specimen for that.

So then the real answer to any of these question is "because fuck you."

Answer me one simple question:

Why are all humans persons?

Put more explicitly: why are we so ready to grant every living human being personhood innately, instead of forcing them to earn their personhood through domination and infliction of force?

(Your answer needs to account for the fact that our granting of innate personhood de jure does nothing to change the de facto situation that those who can exert more domination and force can ignore the personhood of those who can't.)

Maybe it should be. A few decades of it would certainly clear out our poverty problem. If you can't earn enough to feed your kids, you won't have kids for very much longer - and then the cycle of poverty ends, and we only have one generation worth of bodies to sweep up.

No one "deserves" anything. You get what you can take, and you do what you can get away with. And if you can't, then you lose.

I will. Diamonds are worth so much more because some people are better at tricking other people into giving them all their stuff than others. This is exactly the same reason why the Kardashians (or any other given celebrity) are worth so much more than other people, and local firefighters who die protecting entire cities from wildfires don't even get full-time death benefits.

Diamond scarcity is artificial. The real answer is, because someone decided to make a lot of money selling diamonds, and knew how to manipulate people.

Where do people go to learn to do it right? Or is it simply one of those things where if you aren't born knowing, you deserve to lose?

You work hard in college and you get paid more in life;

No you don't.

wait for people to stop being dicks to each other for like, five minutes.

Does he get to keep the money?

Because if he does, that's not a bad gig. $71k/year for 28 years, and the government provides your room and board?

I just got back my decks from thegamecrafter and wow!

Feedback has been super positive. I'm... very excited.

Is it just fantasy?

Did you personally design the new spaceship? Because it has your style of "cool" written all over it.

(How I want this to have gone down:

Producers: "But, wasn't Carl Sagan's spaceship modeled after a dandelion seed?"

Niel DeGrasse Tyson: "Look in my eye. Carl Sagan was awesome, but he was a hippie. I am not a hippie, and I will not cruise around the Cosmos in a hippie spaceship. Now give me something as BAD-ASS as I am. You have two hours.")

Sounds like you aren't trying hard enough. Remember, this is a country of rugged individualists, where you can achieve anything you want if you put in the effort.

so have you tried being more cop?

You always could try not being near cops, not being noticed by cops, not living in places where cops go, not living in places that end up on warrants, not living in places near any drugs or crime, and not living near places where cops might decide they want to pretend there might be drugs or crime.

Have you tried that?

Impossible. I was pulled over just a few hours ago. Why? No reason. They were pulling everyone over.

Just because something is impossible is no reason to not do it. Off-duty police officers manage to not get pulled over or arrested all the time; why can't you be more like them?

Reason? They officially don't need one any more.

Right. So just don't get pulled over.

the solution is to not get pulled over for speeding tickets.

(note: this is not the same thing as not speeding)

Mecha, if I am very very lucky.

Do you think the Copenhagen model of quantum mechanics is the correct interpretation, or do you think the Everett-Wheeler "many worlds" view is more correct, or do yo you subscribe to a Penrose-style "consciousness causes collapse" mechanic?

Also, I recently found myself in a tight spot when my dirigible crash-landed in sub-Saharan Africa due to unexpected monsoons; while we were foraging for bushmeat and fending off predator attacks at night, it occurred to me that a man of your travels might have some useful input. What the three things you would absolutely pack without question for a trans-Saharan dirigible journey, that you feel would best serve you in any possible emergency?

Hello everyone, I just found this community pretty late in my development cycle. I just set up a prototype set for my game, Giant Robots, on thegamecrafter.com (https://www.thegamecrafter.com/designers/giant-robots).

I had a trial run shipped to me, and the cards look amazing. Everyone at my local board game night who tried it loved it, although they all agreed the rules took awhile to get the hang of.

So, right now I'm working on a new rule booklet:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/files.thegamecrafter.com/d1a6e8816cf5c19c0f8394228e58de60ccf4be50

Let's say I have a game ready to prototype right now, and would love to get you guys trying it out.

How do you prefer to be contacted? How do you prefer to receive your playtest materials?

Also: do you consider this a sufficiently-developed set of instructions:

http://imgur.com/a/iSGL5#0

The original article is about finding excuses to turn poor people into criminals. Your thesis seems to be that all poor people ARE criminals anyways, and therefore this is a good policy. Now you're flip-flopping. What gives?

Poor people?

Why?

Work ethic.

Nope: http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/the_reckoning/2012/10/non-payers-by-state.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

do we have good numbers on what the breakdown looks like for that?

So I ask you, why is it OK for an employer to hire an illegal immigrant and do this, but there is outrage when Wal-Mart does the same? I would argue that the people hiring illegal immigrants are far worse than Wal-Mart, but are somehow seen as the 'good guys', helping out illegals.

It isn't, and in fact the people who hire them are MORE contemptible than Wal-Mart, and yes, Wal-Mart is still contemptible.

But the people who are desperate to come here and work are not contemptible, and it's somewhat horrifying that in our culture powerlessness and desperation are considered contemptible traits.

So why do you think they do it?

You know, the place where you went to emigrate legally?

What, you mean back when we didn't have miles of bureaucratic red tape making it nearly impossible for these people to do so?

Seconded. You need to watch Cosmos.

Did you notice the wheels aren't round? the image is stretched vertically.

LOL. Look at all those poor, tired, huddled masses.

He looks tired.

To all you Randians out there:

THIS is what "Going Galt" actually looks like, not your mamby-pamby excuse for why you're unemployed.

Pay for medical insurance, and see a psychiatrist.

I had no idea Putin was a closeted gay, but it makes a lot of sense now.

Do you personally think that the Everett-Wheeler interpretation of quantum mechanics is more likely, or do you favor a variant of the Copenhagen interpretation?

2025 is going to look reeeeally interesting.

We've spent a lot longer breeding dogs for specific traits than we have breeding cats.

I have heard the following "real reason" for the ban:

when you're flying at high speed, you wind up flying over thousands of cell towers every hour. Each time you get within range of a cell tower, your phone does a 'handshake' with it. If 100 passengers all had their phones on, the excess bandwidth would incur serious costs to the cellphone networks.

because it's the only way for them to acquire labor.

It's called a scale-free network.

I'm depressed and unemployed.

So like he said...

Oops, the head came off.

meanwhile, I don't think Phoenix has dropped below a high of 40C in over a month.

Yes, because he's MY worker. I bought him when I paid for his time. If he doesn't like it, he can go work for someone else who feels the same way. If he doesn't like THAT, he can go starve, and decrease the surplus population.

Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

Okay. So then should we start preemptively killing children before they grow up wrong? Because that has all sorts of fun implications.

Seven and nine year olds are not responsible for what their parents do.

...what?

That shit is not on.

An honest one.

Because it leads to people that we don't want to get caught.

JFK tried to do the same thing with the CIA. Look how that turned out.

Remarkably close to what Andrew Jackson said after disregarding a Supreme Court case protecting the rights of Cherokees, and before launching the Trails of Tears combination forced relocation and genocide.

Yep. I always have that quote in mind whenever I'm having these discussions.

Which I can do, since the rest of them will generally follow orders.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6177860-the-fate-of-empires-and-search-for-survival

Well, that hasn't happened for almost 70 years... why would it start now?

The US military really has two counter-points that will remain unstated, so I'll go ahead and state them for them:

1. "Make us"
2. "You and what army?"

except that all of these people who went to trial, failed to prove entrapment to a jury.

(of course, this might have something to with the FBI getting very, very good at painting alleged muslin' ter'rists in the least sympathetic light possible)

Is McDonalds the only fast food joint in your area?

Does McDonalds use force as part of its job description? And even WITHOUT that, this is a stupid analogy. Here's a better one:

Do you remember when all cable companies had local monopolies? how about all phone companies? (This is AFTER deregulation, so don't start whining about how it's all the gubmint's fault)

What if I want a less violent, less intrusive, and more accountable company to provide me security services? Why would you deny me that choice?

I wouldn't; the more violent, more intrusive, and less accountable company that got there first would.

Explain how that would possibly work with a police force? You'd pretty much be stuck with whoever services the area.

... yes, so let's hear some libertarian derp about how privatizing it will make it better.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Yes, and that's why he must be destroyed. Lrn2play n00b

So, is the attention whoring genetic, then?

YES. The system I've heard is called a "basic wage", and works a lot like the old "flat tax" system that the more esoteric Republicans liked to kick around in the 90's. Here's the plan:

1. Remove ALL OTHER welfare benefits.
2. Remove ALL OTHER taxes and subsidies.
3. Give EVERYONE a basic income of $25,000.
4. Tax ALL income beyond that $25,000 at 50%.

Anyone who is "middle class" sees a huge effective tax drop. Anyone who is poor sees a huge effective increase in welfare pay-out. Anyone who makes more than about $150,000 a year and has no family sees an effective tax increase.

There's no loopholes, no cheats, and no government meddling, because it's all YOUR MONEY. There's no minimum wage, no food stamps, no section 8 housing. There's just your basic income, which is completely enough to live in a crappy apartment, feed yourself, and watch TV all day if that's what you really want to do, but the moment you actually want anything worth showing off, you're going to have to get off your ass and contribute to society.

No, because you obviously haven't bought something if you aren't allowed to do whatever you want to/with it.

And yet they are, and we can't do anything about it.

No, you're allowed to do whatever you want to your things after you've bought them.

In general, when a large company says they'll break a small inventor, they aren't bluffing.

Why not go back to an 18 hour work day instead, and just have people so desperate for jobs that they're willing to kill each other to get one? That way they'll have a lower bargaining position, and can be forced to work longer hours for less pay, which will increase shareholder value.

Also, who cares about the environment, or the economy, or society? None of these things contribute to maximizing shareholder value, and none of these things will help make Q3 goals.

Look... what else CAN we do? You can't fight a modern army, and the system's too corrupt to fix.

I think it's a little late to fantasize about armed insurrection against the government, of course. What we need is to start learning how to live within the system, and find ways to preserve the elements of culture and lifestyle that are important to us.

precisely what law did they break?

None. They bought the law so they could rewrite it.

At a certain point, you kinda step beyond legal/illegal and into "you destroyed the legal system altogether."

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Getting the microsecond trading idiots out should be priority 1. Also, certain commodity markets (especially food) need to be heavily regulated or outright barred from trading.

What, that it's a scam designed to extract the world's wealth?

It wasn't always this way, actually - but when you use 19th century goals with 20th century morality and 21st century technology, you create a monster. Economies can't handle all their efficiency being arbitraged away at the speed that computers operate - which is why there needs to be more regulation and taxation.

Well, yeah. Why not?

How we got here is actually pretty simple:

We were told that those terrifying blacks and mexicans had drugs that turned them into ravening monsters, and that they didn't have a moral compass like us decent white folk. Then we were told that the police needed new training and new equipment to deal with the dark menace.

And, for the most part, we believed them. So we gave them new training and new equipment - military training and equipment - whenever they asked for it.

Then they came for the black gang-bangers, but because we were scared of the black gang-bangers, we cheered.

And then they came for the mexican gang-bangers, but because we were scared of the mexican gang-bangers too, we cheered.

And then they came for the casual black drug users, but because we couldn't tell the difference between a casual black drug user and a black gang-banger, we cheered.

And then they came for the casual mexican drug users, but because we figured they were all illegal immigrants anyways, we cheered.

And then they came for the lower-class white drug users, but because Fox News said that they were all meth-heads and just as scary as the blacks and mexicans, we cheered.

And then they got the address wrong, and shot up a family, but because it was in a poor neighborhood and Fox News said they probably deserved it anyways, we cheered.

And then they beat the ever-living shit out of some protesters, but because Fox News said they were socialist hippy weirdos, we cheered.

And then they beat up some black driver, but because we figured no black person should be able to afford a car that good, we cheered.

And then they started coming for us, and we looked around and all the people that we thought would stand up for us were cheering.

man, that's going to be a bad-ass, hot-as-hell scar.

Indeed, which just goes to show that democracy and rule of law have been co-opted, and we have no recourse. So now what?

Pretty much. We had a chance to change this about 20 years ago, but no one had a stomach for revolution then, and now it's way too late.

Absolutely, but who's going to stop us?

Some random person printed this out to stick up in random spots, AND it's for real (the flyer is accurate).

If you're not cop, you're little people.

Halliburton does a bit more than oil - or rather, it's subsidiaries and affiliates do.

Corporations are hydras.

There is no way half of these comments are real.

Microsoft, whoever you hired to astroturf is terrible at it.

Too late. We realized what stupid logic this is just after the police all got military hardware.

As a working musician, it pisses me off when people argue that I shouldn't be paid for what I create.

You should absolutely be paid for what you create, and paid well, which is why I refuse to give any money whatsoever to anything affiliated with Ticketmaster or the RIAA.

basic necessities.

... wow. Just... wow.

Is there a difference?

This one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Morgan_Perry

No, our military-industrial complex do that.

James Bamford: "The NSA has no constitutional right to secretly obtain the telephone records of every American citizen on a daily basis, subject them to sophisticated data mining and store them forever.

And this will stop them how?

It's time government officials are charged with criminal conduct, including lying to Congress"

You and what army?

Rule of law? what's that?

Mass surveillance isn't about terrorism at all, so who cares?

We can't. Guantanamo bay is basically a concentration camp, without the mercy of death as an escape. Anyone we let go will be horribly fucked up; they are highly likely to become terrorists, even if they were no threat to us beforehand.

you need food to live. is it okay to steal food? honest question.

If you're starving? Fuck yes it's okay to steal food.

Look, I'm going to go all Lockean here: society exists because people enter into an agreement with each other, to agree to aid each other and protect each other's interests. It's called the "social contract", and part of that social contract is that you're happier, healthier, and safer in general than if you just winged it on your own in some kind of depraved Mad Max anarchist wasteland.

If you are living in a country where food is plentiful, and you are starving, your society has basically broken its side of the social contract. You are therefore no longer ethically bound to hold up your end. If society tells you that you have to die just because you were born the wrong color or with the wrong last name, you have every right to say "fuck you, I want to live".

Because people like this should die slowly and painfully for the sin of being poor.

Any other argument is just a bullshit excuse - that's the legitimate one.

// didn't say it had to be a GOOD argument.

After awhile you start wondering if this is all deliberate.

I'm actually creating an LCG based around mecha combat:

http://hentaidi.deviantart.com/gallery/37967222

All according to plan.

Well, that's settled.

Flirt.

Nothing wrong with a poor man being in government.

Says who?

Well, technically, without God there would be no matter, so how is "God is Matter" a different sort of statement than "God is Love"?

I guess I'm saying... all the acts you describe are the acts of a being performing Love, not being Love. What does it mean that God IS Love?

What do you think "God is Love" really means?

Yes.

...then it gets what it wants, and drags you kicking and screaming along for the ride.

Power does what it wants.

Power does what it wants.

At the end of 92, I get the strong sense that Quirrelmort is trying to push McGonagall into destroying Hermione's body, under the pretense that it will cause Harry to stop obsessing over it.

There's only two types of people in this world - me and everyone else.

Computer programming.

If a cop was beating you till they saw the grey meat for no reason, wouldn't you want to be able to defend yourself?

If a cop was beating me until they saw the grey meat for no reason, I think it's a little late to be defending myself.

Power does what it wants.

We should be able to protect ourselves.

Why? And says who?

okay, so.

1. This is one of those cases which are increasingly rare these days, where the police were ACTUALLY JUSTIFIED.

That said, confiscating everyone's camera should not be allowed. If they did nothing wrong, they have no reason to hide.

Nowhere, because I can't afford it. :(

Yes it is. I'm playing Unity games on my Mac right now.

Know your place.

How many squirrels could fit into your average State Fair blue-ribbon gourd? Assuming they're alive, of course.

...wait, also, does the number change if we DON'T assume they're alive?

hey, nice work if you can get it.

We take it because we can always be replaced if we make too much fuss. Also, this is how the US has historically replied to workers who get too uppity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/a_second_indiana_prosecutor_is_out_of_a_job_for_unusual_advice_to_wisconsin/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Reuther

well, yeah. Workers are expendable.

Money well-spent. What would you rather it be spent for, making sure 23,000 children don't starve to death? Jesus wouldn't approve.

Sole nuclear power? of course not. But we are a nuclear power. And most of the people objecting to our particular brand of realpolitik are not.

Because I am so very, VERY tired of people expecting a world of fairness and laws, rather than a world of exploitation and power. Because everyone keeps acting like some bullshit combination of ideologies (libertarianism, liberalism, anarchism, communism, whatever) will cure the fundamental truth of human nature, or of ALL nature for that matter: power does what it wants.

I think between Machiavelli, Foucault, and Hobbes, I have a reasonable grasp of how geopolitics actually works. Would you prefer the world to work differently? If so, what do you intend to do to make that happen?

Or heck, we don't have to go any further forward in history than Thucydides, do we?

The USA has never had political acumen. What we've had is raw, unabashed power. Forgetting that is what keeps us looking like an inept laughingstock.

If we do, it will be on all the poor schlubs we don't need anymore. The power base will still be intact.

Perhaps they need to be reminded that we have nuclear weapons?

Depends on how much they piss off the people in charge of their budget, doesn't it?

it doesn't seem to, no. Not given how politics works in the US.

Who would that benefit? And how likely is it that NSA spying would fall to budget cuts before, say, food safety or welfare or road upkeep or corporate oversight?

Who's going to stop them?

Protip: nation-states are an obsolete concept.

because fuck you, that's why.

It's not illegal if you get away with it.

I used to say "it's not illegal if you don't get caught", but apparently even if you get caught you're still okay, if you're too big to prosecute.

Have they tried drone strikes?

This is how you win.

There's no way anyone in the United States is that fucking brainwashed to think that they become some dude's property when they get married.

... you wish. :(

If not for the Rosenbergs, we could have ended the Vietnam conflict with all of two bombs.

Of course. Why would they want it any different?

Significantly after everyone in this thread is charged with aiding and abetting the enemy.

Seriously, guys. Everyone here is far more of a traitor than Dick Cheney. You can tell, because we don't have power.

And the Patriot Act isn't a violation of our fourth amendment rights how?

Oh God I'm agreeing with Sarah Palin what the hell happened?

And the people doing the spying in the first place? Explain how they aren't above the law.

Power does what it wants.

Power does what it wants.

Power does what it wants.

Power does what it wants.

Power does what it wants.

anything other than a big government just evolves until it becomes a bad big government.

Power does what it wants.

Power does what it wants.

And much less fun for the sort of people who gravitate towards these jobs.

Humans living in Western democracies.

Because we've given up on Rule of Law.

That's because they're afraid of saying what they really mean, which is that we are no longer living under "rule of law" whatsoever.

So then when are they going to go after Bank of America? Or all the police officers that shoot up civilians? or all the military contractors in Iraq that basically bilked the US for billions of dollars?

And so do I.

"No User Serviceable Parts Inside"

And who would be in charge of that investigation, do you think? Perhaps some sort of federal bureau?

how long does it actually last in sunlight?

You realize that rule of law has broken down, right?

Horseshit.

But the convictions still hold up, right?

If they're present, they'd have to record a vote. They know that no matter what they vote, they lose.

I seem to recognize your face,

It's hauntingly familiar, yet I can't seem to place it

Cannot find the candle of thought to light your name

Lifetimes are catching up with me

All these changes taking place I wish I'd seen the place

But no one's ever taken me

Hearts and thoughts they fade

Fade away

I swear I recognize your breath

Memories like fingerprints are slowly raising

Me you wouldn't recall, for I'm not my former

It's hard when, your stuck upon the shelf

I changed by not changing at all, small town predicts my fate

Perhaps that's what no one wants to see

I just want to scream, hello

My god its been so long, never dreamed you'd return

But now here you are, and here I am

Hearts and thoughts they fade

Fade away

in what can only be described as his face?

Power does what it wants.

Exceptionally so.

Money and time. I've done game design and computer programming for two decades (not professionally, of course), but I never have enough time to work on what I want, and when I do, I don't have the money to live on and pay artists / level designers / etc.

make a video game.

Win.

Yes, but you'll note my argument isn't precisely that morals don't exist in the sense of "things that influence human behavior"; it's that, if you don't have the power to enforce them, what good are they?

When the allies came, Jews were still evil to anyone still buying into Nazi ideology.

Yes, but those people no longer had control of the gas chambers, which seems to me to be the important part.

Let me say it by metaphor:

While the Nazis are in power, Jews are evil, because what are you gonna do you stupid kike, cry about it?

When the Allies come, Jews are good, because look at what those horrible Nazis did to God's chosen people.

The only true 'evil' is powerlessness. We pay lip-service to other ethical ideas, but ultimately we treat the powerless with contempt because we can, until they stop being powerless. Then we act like they never deserved the contempt they were treated with, and act like the people who treated them with contempt were somehow evil (but only if we can make THOSE people powerless; otherwise it was all just a tragic misunderstanding).

Some people's morals allow them to ignore helping you, other people's morals don't. That's not a reflection on you, it's a reflection on them and their worldview.

See, this doesn't make much sense to me. In my view, if someone doesn't want to help you, and you can't make them help you, that's absolutely a reflection on you, since you're the one who isn't helped. If you CAN make them help you, then their lack of willingness to help you IS a reflection on them, since they're the one that's being forced to help.

It seems, though, that in general people only cooperate with people at roughly the same power level as themselves, and generally only cooperate with kin, and only if they have an external enemy to gang up on.

"Me against my brother; me and my brothers against my cousins; me, my brothers and my cousins against my clan; me and my clan against the world."

Actually, no; I'm 39, below the poverty line, and slowly sinking into the abyss. And I'm tired of hearing that I don't deserve help when I ask for it, so I'm desperately constructing a world-view where I'll stop asking for it.

I don't understand how that question is relevant.

Step 1: Whenever someone does something that you don't like, stop and ask yourself, "is it possible that I've ever done this without realizing it or without caring about how it felt from this side?"

Step 2: Whenever someone does something that you don't like, stop and ask yourself, "how can I pay more attention to my own actions in the future, to lessen the chance that I act like this towards someone else?"

Get in the habit of reacting this way to other peoples' treatment of you, and you will find yourself treating others better and better.

Can you explain what you mean by "ethics", please?

Evolution would do whatever it does. It's a blind process.

Because it's better to be on the top of the social hierarchy than on the bottom of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Mitchell_effect

Congress would need to decide to do that to themselves for that to happen.

Why would they ever decide to do that to themselves?

Because they want the status/prestige that they believe comes from being a 'hero', I would presume.

That hasn't been my experience. From what I've seen, instilling what we call 'ethics' in children seems to be primarily a function of controlling enough of their world that they have no choice but to conform to the behaviors that their parents/owners desire from them.

Can you rephrase all that please? I'm having trouble parsing your sentences.

So you believe that the only thing that changes people's mind is how well it's presented?

How well it's presented and how succeptible they are to the idea, yes. But "how succeptible they are to the idea" is itself just a matter of what other forces are acting on them, many of which are also controllable (for example, whether they've had enough to eat, and whether they're living in fear of some real or imagined looming disaster).

If hitler was just a bit more charismatic the whole world would have been convinced that the murder of Jews was justified?

A good deal of the world almost was. Are you suggesting that there was an innate evil that existed in the hearts of Germans that was somehow lacking in the hearts of Americans and British? If so, can you explain how that happened?

Or is there a something else at play?

Yes, economic pressures and presentations of status go a long way, but those are also mostly part of "how well something is presented".

Have you considered offering elbow/knee pads, gloves, and/or a vest with a processor built in?

With a rig like that, you could do full mocap, and feed it into a game's skeletal ragdoll system.

If I care about the topic; don't I gain this "soft" power to some degree simply by trying to share my views with others?

Not necessarily, if your audience doesn't care about you or your point of view.

What would be a good name for this power?

I usually call it "charisma" - or, if approached in a more systematic way, "propaganda".

Aren't you making the assumption that if someone values ethics they agree with the world they live in?

If someone values ethics and does not agree with the world they live in, but cannot change it, then what does it matter whether they value ethics or not?

What if I could convince you that the world was screwed up because we don't have ethics? Am I using power over you?

The capacity to convince others is necessarily an aspect of soft power, yes.

when you have no particular reason to care about the house or the furniture, why not use a shotgun?

Do?

What makes you think we can 'do' anything?

Increases in automation mean that a lot of the work that is currently being done by humans can be instead done by machinery, supervised by a smaller pool of humans. For most of human history, a small number of people have been supported in relative luxury by a much larger population of effective slaves. By replacing this slave labor with technological solutions, we make much of our population redundant.

One naive idea that technological utopianists will throw around is that we should then turn and elevate that redundant population to the same level of luxury as the ruling class - the problem with this idea is that you need more than technological force-multipliers; you also need raw material resources. And while we definitely have the technology to give everyone a life of luxury, we do NOT have the raw material resources to do so if "everybody" is several billion people.

Luckily, as fertility rates drop, we slowly approach a population that can be stably provided for with our technology, without overburdening the environment. At around 1.5 billion people, we should reach a level of luxury where no one fundamentally has to perform labor unless they want to, and where people can turn entirely to creative, innovative or hedonistic pursuits.

Yep! I've actually been working on spec design for a game exactly like this since about 1998; the tech just hasn't been available until now.

Sure, but what can you do about it?

If 300 million Americans decided to rise up against the full might of the US Military, who do you think would win?

Remember that drones have no moral compunction against firing on civilians, and most local police forces have been trained for decades to be comfortable with firing on their populace.

So, what do you think you can do about it?

And this surprises anyone?

Benghazi scandal: pure partisan bullshit.

IRS targeting political groups: Good. This is what the IRS SHOULD be doing. Why is this bad?

NSA wiretapping scandal: Excuse me, this was not the presidency I ordered. You fucking PROMISED. I thought, just once, I'd be able to do better than "well, at least he's not the other guy." Damnit.

The world does not owe you a living. The world does not owe you a CHANCE at a living. The world does not owe you an opportunity to get a chance at a living. The world does not owe you air, or food, or medicine, or shelter. The world does not owe you caring parents, or functioning limbs, or a working brain, or protection from bullies, or protection from disaster.

You get exactly what you deserve, and so does everyone else. The little girl that becomes a sex slave at age 4 and dies at age 12 got what she deserved. The African warlord that lived like a king for 30 years by forcing 11 year old boys to rape their mothers to death before giving them guns and forcing them to fight for him got what he deserved. The media mogul who lied to billions of people to make their quality of life lower so he could keep controlling them through fear and die a billionaire got what he deserved. The political advisor who convinced presidents to push us to the brink of nuclear war so he could enjoy access to power and celebrity got what he deserved. The teenage girls who are murdered by her own families for being raped got what they deserved.

The world owes you nothing.

Even if that were true, your initial statement was:

Greenwald is an honest political commentator with no ulterior motives. This is why he appears as a panelist on the Sean Hannity Show. /s

Which certainly seemed to be trying to imply that he was some sort of regular Fox shill, rather than someone that happened to be on a show one time. I'm still dubious of your weakened claim, of course - and the fact that you are weakening your claim itself does not do your argument much service.

Is this like that little girl Glenn Beck allegedly raped in 1993?

Yes, that's exactly the most important thing to take away from all this.

I disagree with this; I think we treat women as objects of desire, and men as objects of stability and success. This isn't healthy for either side.