Lurker > ElatedVenusaur

Darkman124 posted...

trying to catch tauros and chansey was an exercise in futility

At least Chansey is in Unknown Dungeon.
Thankfully, we know better these days. Enter the Safari Zone, tool around until time's up, then fly to Cinnabar and surf the coast until Tauros and Kangaskhan deign to make an appearance. It will still take a while, they're still annoying to catch(especially in RBY, what with no False Swipe), but it's way less irritating than the Safari Zone.

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1386-5-reasons-being-male-porn-star-less-fun-than-it-looks.html
For completeness sake, they also talked with a male porn star about his experience in the industry.
Orthopox12 posted...

Someone should def hop on what she was suggesting at the bottom. Seems she knows the industry very well.

Back when I used Twitter, I followed a few porn actresses. They all seemed to have a decent head for business. It definitely takes more than being sexy to make it big in porn.

Mostly it's money. Porn and adjacent professions such as stripping can pay very well, often better than a typical job one could work while going to school, for example.
But you need a really specific mindset and personality to do it. How many people reading this thread are okay with being naked around strangers? Because that's literally the minimum porn requires you to do.
http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1816-6-things-you-learn-as-lesbian-porn-star.html
Lily Cade offered Cracked some insight.

Sayoria posted...

Error1355 posted...

How does one exfoliate a leg?

Body scrub baby. Body scrub. Will be doing it again tonighttt.

I heard that in a co-worker's voice, because she literally talks like that.
She owns.

Megaman50100 posted...

Is it gay to exist in the same reality as another man?

If you even so much as think about a man, even yourself, it's gay and you should feel bad about it even though there's totally nothing wrong with being gay!

Drift Balloon
Drift Blimp
Bronze Ore
Bronze Gong
They're all pretty straightforward.

Can't go wrong with a ghost balloon that evolves into a ghost blimp.
Presumably to make kidnapping easier...

So far, he's only Tyler bad. If he pretty much aids and abets an impending rebellion against the United States, THEN he'll be in Buchanan's neighborhood.

BloodyNate posted...

Thats a shitty thing of her to say. If she is asexual, you should respect that, but she shouldnt be allowed to shit on your either

If she's asexual, the only utility offered by having sex with some one(for her) is reproduction. If she currently doesn't want to reproduce, then she has no reason to engage in sex. She doesn't owe OP sex. By the same token, if the OP desires sex and cannot get it from her, it's reasonable for him to break up with her(unless the relationship is worth never having sex aside from possibly reproducing in the far future, which some are).

Karl Marx himself was an interesting character. He was brilliant, dedicated, and studious, but also petty and seems to have suffered from some combination of hypochondria, OCD, and anxiety disorders. He got exiled from his native Germany, then from Belgium(where he met Engels, IIRC), and finally from France before ending up in London. He had terrible handwriting that only he, his wife Jenny, and Engels could read. He had three daughters, and insisted on them receiving a top-notch education in spite of the fact he was often penniless and spent a lot of time ducking debt collectors(until Engels eventually paid them off. His family owned factories and he managed the one they had in England). Marx would spend hours in the library, poring over demographic data and texts of all kinds(from economic and sociology to fiction), and sometimes spent all night in his study, either writing or pacing. He was fond of pubbing and cigars(though he invariably had to settle for cheap ones).
Oh, and he was really Russophobic.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/sports/redskins-cheerleaders-nfl.html?!smid=tw-nytsports&smtyp=cur
Hot takes only please.

ROBANN_88 posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

Tyranthraxus posted...

ROBANN_88 posted...

Communism has been tried several times.

it usually ends with starvation, genocides, secret police and political murders

Any time any government ends it generally ends with starvation and genocides.

Like, that's why it ends.

The mistake here, is that starvation and genocides happen in the middle of communism, not the end

this exactly.
for example
Chinas Great Leap Forward wasn't them going "whoops, our economy crashed, the state fell apart, through no fault of our own and now we're dying"

that was deliberately set in motion in the belief that it would improve Chine, through communistic ideals, and it was a massive failure, with i don't know how many millions dead.

I didn't realize thinking sparrows are pests or not understanding how smelting works were key parts of being a good communist. Must not have gotten that missive from the International...

She can wear whatever she wants. We don't have to like it.

UnfairRepresent posted...

I don't get how Trumps lawyers are so cool with him ranting like this on Twitter.

Lawyers always tell their clients to shut the fuck up as they could end up incriminating themselves.

But Trump is ranting daily...

His lawyers all seem to be pretty bottom-of-the-barrel. Plus, it's clear that Trump is addicted to tweeting whatever the hell is on his mind whenever he wants.

That's not entirely true.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/partisan-loyalty-begins-at-age-18/
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/09/the-politics-of-american-generations-how-age-affects-attitudes-and-voting-behavior/
Some data suggests partisan affiliations(and thus, to some extent, ideology) are shaped by conditions when one comes of age and then remain largely static.

It (uniquely) empowered the state over all other social actors and established(over the course of centuries) a professional bureaucratic class to run this massive state, allowing it to become both unusually cohesive and unusually well-governed(on balance). These factors allowed the Chinese state to become hegemonic regionally as early as the Han dynasty(206 BCE- 221 CE). It was essentially unbeatable, barring internal strife.

However, China began to stagnate towards the end of the Ming dynasty, as it was wracked by a succession of economic and political disasters(including one emperor essentially "going on strike" for decades: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Emperor-Wanli-of-Ming-dynasty-go-on-strike-for-20-years-given-that-he-was-not-that-lazy-during-the-intial-years-of-rule ). Following the suicide of the last Ming Emperor as rebels overran Beijing, the Jurchen of Manchuria managed to conquer China and establish the Qing dynasty. However, their status as foreigners made their rule somewhat precarious, and inspired them to simultaneously impose strict regulations(such as forcing Chinese men to wear Manchu-style pigtails or queues) and also seek to govern lightly(lightening the tax burden to an almost absurd degree). The Qing additionally largely adopted the Ming's isolationist attitude, and typically treated Europeans with contempt.
In other words, at just the time that European states were modernizing and becoming ever more capable(as were the various trading companies and other powerful socio-political actors), the Chinese state was in decay. The extent of this wasn't realized until the First Opium War: previously, China had proven itself adept at combating European incursions(such as a failed attempt by the Dutch to colonize Taiwan), but the British army and naval units crushed the Chinese at every turn, despite being heavily outnumbered. Their soldiers and sailors were simply much better trained, had much better equipment, much better tactics, much better leadership, and higher morale.
The shock of being defeated by a (to them) minor barbarian power like the British created a lot of discontent in Chinese society and called into question the legitimacy of Qing rule. It also inspired other European powers to extract their own concessions from China. This, along with the Taiping Rebellion in the 1860s, further weakened the Qing's rule, and ironically made it much harder for them to successfully reform in a way that would allow them to better resist the Europeans.

The Qing dynasty proved unable to meet with the challenges that faced it, and was eventually toppled by internal forces powered by Chinese nationalism, anger at China's humiliation by numerous foreign powers, and a sincere desire to reform in order to better meet the challenges of a modern age that traditional Chinese institutions seemed unable to cope with.

This is all very broad, and possibly even very wrong. Just a disclaimer.

The only peaceful path to peace(in the current situation) necessarily involves letting Kim Jong Un and the North Korean regime get off scot-free for their numerous crimes. Holding them accountable requires defeating them, and that requires a war that would result in untold casualties.
It is deeply upsetting that the Kim regime could never be brought to justice, but it's better than a war would be.

It's past time we abolished the ICE.

There's a good game in there, it's just terribly bloated.

I mean, Bush II got them to promise to de-nuclearize, and, well, they didn't. Plus, this seems to have more to do with South Korean diplomacy than anything we've done, but it's a good thing, and I hope Trump doesn't screw it up. It can be his "Nixon goes to China" moment!

I honestly didn't know who Iron Man was before that movie. But they nailed the movie(and the casting!), so now Iron Man is A-list.

ehhwhatever posted...

soulunison2 posted...

Rip giants

what they didnt get chubs?

They got Barkley. Guess they're all-in on Eli.
Not sure they should be. Also, shocked to see the Ravens took Lamar Jackson(QB).

I'm a Bills fan, so I have two picks to talk about.

Pick #7, Josh Allen, QB, Wyoming
I don't like this pick. You can talk about his athleticism, his arm-strength, and his potential until the cows come home, but it doesn't change the fact that he routinely made questionable decisions, showed poor accuracy on throws, and just generally wasn't very good in the Mountain West Conference. I would have much rather they took Josh Rosen, who seems like a much more polished passer, but they didn't. This is a very boom-or-bust pick. At least Josh Allen has experience playing behind a bad offensive line throwing to bad wide receivers, 'cause he's going to need it. Probably best he spends year 1 watching A.J. McCarron be ground into a fine paste.

Pick #16, Tremaine Edmunds, Virginia Tech
I do; however, love this pick. An extremely athletic linebacker with the ability to be a force both in the box and in coverage. What's not to love? Well, he is inexperienced, and just 19!(he turns 20 May 2nd). But I have a lot of faith in our defensive coaching staff, so I think this is going to be pretty great.

Looking Ahead
We coughed up both our 2nd-round picks to move up for Allen, so that leaves us with little ammunition in the next two rounds. But, Jesus: our offensive line and receiving corp are bad. I hope some decent lineman falls. Shady McCoy needs blockers.

Which, it should be said, would empower Iranian hard-liners who have always maintained that negotiating with us is pointless.

I hope it gets ratified, but Congress placed an expiration date(1979) on the original proposal. Is there any resolution to that?

What is "real communism"? Marx never offered much detail about it: most of his work is a critique of the short-comings of capitalism, but he was certain only an advanced industrial capitalist society could transition into it.
Lenin thought a primarily agrarian society could gloss over the industrial stage and go straight to communism. Whether he was right or wrong, he constructed a fairly authoritarian state upon the foundation of grass-roots Soviets(the extent to which he was forced to do so by the civil war is an open question). Nevertheless, it was seized by Stalin(one of his trusted lieutenants) and transformed into a totalitarian hell-scape from which little of use can be learned(it was and is already obvious totalitarianism is horrible).
Nonetheless, Soviet Russia became the prototype upon which others(Mao, Castro, Ho Chih Minh, etc.) based their own communist states.

There aren't a lot of Pokemon that are entirely unusable, but particularly in RBY, with its sparse move-pools, a lot of Pokemon are utterly reliant on TMs to get by.
Even so, you have stuff like Wigglytuff(basically Clefable but worse) and Sandshrew/Sandslash not learning a ground move naturally.
For those of you replaying, pokemon like Tauros, Alakazam, Exeggcutor, Gengar, Persian, Golem, Rhydon, and Starmie ruled the meta. Crit rate is heavily based on Speed. Focus Energy actually halves crit rate. Evolve Nidorans ASAP(they learn literally nothing better than Thrash/Body Slam). Elemental punches are special-based(so Hitmonchan is kind of useless).

It was a simpler time. Don't forget to fool around with glitches, either. The simplest one is the strip of water tiles on Cinnabar's east coast: they don't have encounter data defined, so the game simply uses the last encounter data it loaded. Great way to get those annoying Safari Zone exclusives!

A democratic economy.

Darkman124 posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

Social security being funded for just two decades is a fucking horrifying nightmare, not a positive

the two decade estimate is based on current interest rates of treasury notes

and no alterations whatsoever to either benefit payout or payroll taxation

i promise to give this thread some thorough responses tomorrow, darkjedilink is spreading severe misinformation

but ive been tweaking sims for 18 hours and my eyes are bleeding

ps kazi: respect for coming to this thread with an open mind, i have been wrong to troll you in the past and won't in the future

pps budget balance is not something to toss into the wind entirely and pc is correct to note that we can't just borrow ten trillion tomorrow to fund the first decade of a UHC

I would be eager to see this myself. I only know the basics. Knowledge, as they say, is power.
But no one's proposing to just "borrow" $10 trillion dollars. That post smacks of bad faith to me.

darkjedilink posted...

Broseph_Stalin posted...

The US borrows money at extremely low interest and has a dynamic economy with higher than average growth for the developed world. That's the most important thing when it comes to debt. It's why the debt itself is not as large an issue as people think and why we're in a totally different situation than say, Greece.

Being able to borrow money at low interest is a very good thing when your country is in a recession or you're in need of a large spending project (like infrastructure). The problem is the US has been deficit spending for decades of mostly constant economic growth. Contrary to popular belief our deficits are mostly because of Republican policies so we've had very little to show for it. Tax cuts for the wealthy, wars and the most inefficient health care system in the developed world don't benefit the average person.

It's not the deficit that's the problem. It's the debt.

In either case, you're wrong that it's the fault of Republican policy - two-thirds of both the debt and total spending are made up solely by Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

And while our fiscal situation isn't as bad as Greece, it IS as bad as most of Europe, and most of Europe is teetering on the brink of disaster.

You are aware that Social Security is nearly entirely financed by its dedicated payroll tax and interest on its assets? In other words, it is fiscally self-sustaining, and will remain so(by current projections) for almost two decades. Cutting Social Security in a way that would be revenue-positive would involve leaving the payroll tax in place while reducing the pay-outs of the program. This would be hugely unpopular, for reasons that should be obvious.

As for Medicare, its expenditures are mostly paid out by two trust funds held by the U.S. Treasury Department: the Hospital Trust Insurance Fund(which funds Part A) and the Supplementary Medical Insurance Fund(which funds Part B and a portion of Part D). Medicare Part D is the only part of the program without a discreet, dedicated funding mechanism(this was by design).

Medicaid is the only one that's actually funded out of general revenue, but every state runs its own program which is, in part, funded by that state. This makes it the most vulnerable to cuts, but given that it exists to give health insurance to poor people, I wonder what you think would be a better use of the money?

I do think there's a good argument that the U.S. has an unique ability to leverage deficit spending, given the status of its currency as the global standard and the lack of reliable alternatives. That could change, of course, but at the moment, that's unforseeable, barring a(n artificially created) default.
Nonetheless, it's obvious there will be significant resistance to a program that ignored the deficit in pursuit of progressive policy goals in a way you did not and would never see towards something like the recent Republican tax cuts. At the same time, simply balancing the budget is simply not a winner at the ballot box. Nor does it address the many(IMO more pressing) issues facing our country.

Blue crab is good stuff. Really, crab in general is great eating.

If the residents of the proposed state vote to create it, sure. It can exist.

Lately? I read A Shattered Peace by David Andelman, about the Versailles Peace Conference. It was pretty good: it broke out specific actors and nations into separate chapters and chronicled their efforts and the end results. For example, there's one chapter about the Arabs, one about the Zionists, one about the Czechs and Poles, etc. etc. Needless to say, the Versailles Treaty and its ancillary treaties managed to fail basically everyone. Before that, I read Close to Home, a collection of essays on socialist feminism by French feminist Christine Delphy.

All-time, let me give credit to Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard Miles(it reconstructs a Punic perspective of the history of Carthage from primarily Greek and Roman sources), The Last Days of the Inca by Kim MacQuarrie(attempts largely the same thing, just with Spanish sources and with the Inca), and The Thirty Years War: A European Tragedy by Peter Wilson(an absolute TOME: it's over 1,000 pages, including notes and references, but it's a great exhaustive run-down of the entire war from setting the stage to the aftermath).
I also recently read an excellent biography of Karl Marx and an (equally excellent) book called Young Stalin about, well, Stalin's life up through the Russian Revolution. More details would require me to excavate them, something I cannot do at the moment.

Scrappy ChoiceSpecs Exploud Boomburst is truth.

I feel like we should be really reluctant to take KJU at his word. And also, this has at least as much to do with South Korea's efforts as ours.
With that said, this is good news.

Cornmuffins posted...

Sadly the only niner game you'd have a chance to see is against the Lions, but at least you'd get to see Jimmy G

I believe you mean Jimmy GOAT. He's not a loser, unlike Brady and all those other quarterbacks.

Balrog0 posted...

@ElatedVenusaur
Dunno how far I want to go down this rabbit hole, I do probably disagree with this author on the substance of his argument especially re: deficits, but I more mean stuff like how Ryan is deeply unpopular but no one talks about how he is; he draws a parallel to Pelosi but ignores the implication that the speakership makes one unpopular.

That line about him tanking Romney's presidential campaign in particular sticks out to me, 2011 Ryan had an overall net positive in terms of favorability rating

I feel like talk of Ryan's popularity(particularly before he became Speaker of the House) is a real chicken-and-egg sort of thing. Why was he popular? Because he was fairly unknown outside his conservatives bonafides? Because certain Beltway-types had a man-crush on him? Because actual people liked his policy proposals? That's why this conversation matters: if the media conveys a broadly-biased account of a politician, it becomes difficult to gauge how popular they actually are, and certainly how popular they would be without the media's help.

Otherwise, I agree with you. People who write about politics have a tendency to read too much into details. When it comes to Mitt Romney and him losing in 2012, the principle factor(IMO) was that Barack Obama was a somewhat popular and very charismatic incumbent. I don't think many would describe Romney as charismatic. Paul Ryan's role was incredibly minor.

Bills. Let's see...
Okay, 5 out of our first 7 games on the road, including @Vikings and @Packers back-to-back. Our one prime-time game is at home against the Patriots Week 8. It's also our first divisional game. Conversely, 5 of our last 7 games are divisional games, and we get a whopping 3 home games in December(and are @New England Week 16). Hope ya'll like blizzard ball. We finish at home against the Dolphins.
Yep, I get a real 7-9 vibe from this.

Darkman124 posted...

economic liberalism has not been something that the "establishments of the left" (the "liberal media" and the "democratic party") care to defend for some time.

and perhaps it's our fault--voters don't seem to give a shit about economics. are we so sure medicare is popular? i mean, maybe when it's gone it will be, but we're too stupid and preoccupied to value it when it's time to defend it.

the sacred cow of the left in the modern era seems to be feminism. it was not paul ryan's rise to power that gave birth to the "blue wave"--after all he's been in charge for a while now--but the shit-spewing of trump. the GOP tax cut isn't even unpopular.

you don't see stories on the far-right lunacy of ryan's libertarian overlords, but you see plenty about the myriad ways in which trump disrespects women and minorities.

so perhaps it is just the companies that run our 'liberal media' seeking to sell the stories that, y'know...sell.

I often wonder what the Democratic Party can be said to stand for. Like, unequivocally. I guess feminism and maybe LGBTQ rights. Otherwise, it's basically the "Not-Republican" party. They'll tolerate almost anything else.

Balrog0 posted...

Strongly overstates it's case but only dumb people think the media has a consistent liberal bias so

I do think the article's point is unequivocally true, in terms of Paul Ryan. He provided numbers and policy briefs, which is more than a lot on the right, so certain people in the media anointed him a "serious" politician willing to make "hard choices", either not noticing or not caring that his math was bunk.

A bit off-topic, but Stellaris is on-sale on the Humble Store: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/scifi-week
Few other sci-fi goodies too. Now get back to crusading.

https://www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/scifi-week
I'm a big fan of Stellaris, but it also includes a lot of other stuff, including GalCiv III, Modern Master of Orion, Homeworld, etc.
Also FTL: Faster than Light and Talos Principle, if you somehow don't have them yet.

Ugh. Always hated the damned thing. I wish Typhlosion had a move pool.

UncleBourbon33 posted...

Fascism is a form of socialism though.

Which is why Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Pinochet, etc. nationalized the economy, rather than enriching pre-existing economic elites in order to consolidate their power, am I right?
I would be right, in opposite world.

No, it is Bolshevism or Leninism or however you wish to label it. It is strongly based on communism, and has nothing at all to do with Fascism other than that they both trend authoritarian.
Authoritarianism is that extra-special ingredient that ruins everything.

Shuto-uke posted...

MrTacoBell posted...

taking too long breaks.

http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-workers-have-to-pee-into-bottles-2018-4

This is what happens when a single company is the sole employer for many things.

The only silver lining is those snooty Whole Foods workers will be taken down a notch

The only good thing about working at Whole Foods is that the compensation is better than most other places. You're still working in a grocery store dealing with a spoiled-ass clientele all day, and the company has long favored the sorts of careerists who get ahead by kissing ass rather than knowing what they're doing.
I'm sorry you're so salty though.

Balrog0 posted...

also the obvious way to fix this, that these 'problem solvers' and 'no labels' types will never promote, is rank-choice voting a moving to a purely proportional system

Agreed. While we're at it, let's abolish the anti-democratic elements which exist in our system of government(e.g. the Electoral College, capping the number of representatives in the House, etc.) I firmly believe that will lead to better outcomes.

FFVII had a lot of goofy mini-games. Their virtue was in occurring once and ultimately making little difference(failing the Fort Condor mini-game simply results in a boss fight, as opposed to outright failure).