Lurker > ElatedVenusaur

ROBANN_88 posted...

part of that is explained by the Illusive Man already being partly indoctrinated long before, so he might have been persuaded to put it there to infect the rest.

Ah yes, of course, he was actually indoctrinated all along! That's totally not something they pulled out of their asses to justify his arc at the 11th hour.
How about this: Shepherd died at the beginning of the first game and the entire series was just their neurons firing randomly in the timespan between which they lost consciousness and when they actually died.

Seaman_Prime posted...

There was this rabbit hole talking about the original plot of ME3 where it would be focused on dark matter causing stars to explode like in ME2 where youre on that planet where the sun damages you. But the idea was that the Reapers were harvesting the most developed races to combine their intellect until they could solve the problem. And in the end you would either defeat the reapers and be doomed to the apocalypse or you would persuade the reapers to stand down.

The Reapers being some ridiculously ancient rogue AI harvesting intellect and scientific knowledge to stop entropy would probably have been more compelling than what we got, even if it's obviously dumb.
But then, ME3 should tell us we can't trust that it wouldn't have been completely stupid.

But yeah, I too found Cerberus to be rather jarring. It seems to straight-up have more resources than most galactic governments, and it has reams of exclusive research knowledge and Reaper artifacts and...how? How does an avowedly human-supremacist terrorist organization have all these resources? Terrorist organizations are terrorist organizations because they don't have a ton of support and/or resources!
They then turn around and install a Reaper skeleton(please forget that there was probably a massive explosion that should have destroyed it or at least mangled it) in their secret headquarters, in spite of knowing more about indoctrination than literally anyone else. It's insanely stupid!
Wait, why are the Collectors making a Human Reaper anyway? If all you need to do is abduct a few thousand randos to make one, why...you know what? I feel like I'm putting more thought into this than Bioware did, at this point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z-rhM-dcO8
You tell me.
Also just Bjork running away from her cat-husband to go on a bender. Normal Bjork stuff.

Fine, I guess Ill have to get more obscure.

Wax Fang - Victory Laps

Courtney Barnett - Tell Me How You Really Feel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWgAePYIEp8&t=21s

Corutney Barnett - Sunday Roast - Live from the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfKwZLyb40k

I really have never known what the big deal is about this. Women have body hair. Deal with it.

Work was hell today: the Super Bowl is tomorrow, and we're also supposed to get snow, so it was busy as hell all day. Then Amazon dropped the ball and I had to stay late putting abandoned Prime order product back on the shelves. At least I was with my favorite supervisor.

But I got to chill with my crush on break. She almost always tells me when she's taking her half, and doesn't seem to mind in the slightest that I wind up taking mine at the same time.
Take the good with the bad.

I personally like Magmortar's design: gives a bit of a Robot Master vibe with the arm cannon. Really, with the arm cannons, it's a shame it doesn't Mega Launcher as an ability, if only for the cool factor. It just looks weird because it doesn't have Magmar's random duck bill(a puzzling omission, to be certain).

Rhyperior just sucks out loud though. It clashes really badly with Rhydon in terms of color and proportions, and Solid Rock, its at-the-time unique ability, is pretty underwhelming, particularly on a pokemon with 4x weaknesses.

_Krave_ posted...

I've read a lot about people regretting transitioning. Is there any validity to those claims?

It's difficult to quantify, but all available evidence points to the percentage of people who regret transitioning being very low. That is not to say that their experiences are invalid, only that they are rare, and anti-trans people are eager to exploit them to further their agenda.

Electivire not being part Fighting is a big missed opportunity, though Electabuzz ought to have been part Fighting from the get-go, IMO.
But yeah, physical-based Electric types get screwed on offense. Theres literally nothing special about Volt Tackle, Game Freak, give it the hell up.

Bad_Mojo posted...

So it should be -

F/F/F/F
Job1/Job1/Job1/Job1
Job1/Job2/Job2/Job2
Job1/Job2/Job3/Job3
Job1/Job2/Job3/Job4

I don't know, I like my way better. Each crystal grants power/Job to 1 character until you get the 4th

Yeah, though you can have any combination of valid jobs and freely swap characters between them unless youre doing a Natural run.
I generally only finish a single run per Fiesta.

Bad_Mojo posted...

I do the Fiesta every year, but I don't think I follow the correct rules. This is what I do -

* Freelancer x4 until you get the first set of Jobs
* Roll for Job 1, which is what one of them becomes
* The other remain Freelancers until the next set up Jobs
* Roll for Job 2, select a character, and that's what they are
* Continue until everyone has a Job
* And then once you get *Spoiler* I re-roll on ALL the Jobs I have and that's what they get

Yeah, youre only supposed to use whatever job(s) are available though it is generally considered acceptable to run a Freelancer if you get White Mage as your first job, since theres no question of you dying, just getting bored.

Going to save most of it: I plan on going full-time at school in the fall and this income will be way down.

!Gaia is predictable and a nice ability for spellcasters, and Geomancer in general learns useful utility abilities.

Nonetheless, Geomancer is an absolutely miserable class to get in a Four Job Fiesta run if you don't have any other castes.

Oh, and fun fact: !Gaia isn't considered magic by the game, so using it will trigger Omniscient's Reset.

SpaceBear_ posted...

Yeah, Visser is, like, a warlord. Visser Three is in charge of the Earth invasion. Visser One is the top dog whose host is Marco's mother.

There's a really haunting moment in an early book where Visser One is addressing Marco thinking he is also a Yeerk host.

Visser One says something along the lines of "I'm not sure if you're aware, but your host is the biological son of my host. She's really screaming away inside my head here."

I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist of it. That's when Marco decides to really take the war seriously.

The power struggle dynamic we get shown in glimpses(and which is fully revealed to us in the Visser book) between Vissers One and Three is a really neat element that adds so much texture to the series. And it's kind of neat that it's implied the Council of 13(which run the show in the Yeerk Empire, at least in theory) is ambivalent about Visser One's infiltration plan(and/or about Visser One personally), because they put Visser One's bitter rival in charge of it i.e. Visser Three, who thinks they should just invade, seize control, and get it over with.
Visser additionally implies Visser One has an actual emotional attachment to the children a former host body gave birth to. The series really goes out of its way to avoid painting the Yeerks as irredeemable monsters, which takes quite a bit of effort given that they're mind-controlling brain parasites actively working to infest other sentients.

RiKuToTheMiGhtY posted...

Yes he did, it was something to do with not wanting to kill yeerks who were defenseless I think, been over 10 years since I read the books.

It also was the book that explained why earth was targeted, good ol Chapman even as a child/teen was a shitbag and suggested it to save his own skin.

Yeah, Elfangor wasn't down with war-criming with the disgraced War Prince you kind of get the feeling the military probably wasn't too bothered by what Alloran did, given he wasn't even stripped of his rank, but unleashing a virus that painfully dissolves living matter was probably a PR disaster near the level of "Seerow's Kindness", even assuming the Andalite public is/was casually xenophobic. and lost track of the mind-controlling brain parasite. Whoops! At least he didn't get trapped as a Taxxon. That whole mission was a disaster from the word go, really.

Trumble posted...

Yeah, probably a bit of a bad example there, but in general TC is right to observe that political elites on each side have more in common with each other - and more interest in looking after each other - than they do with/for the average person on either side.

Oh, absolutely. This sentiment is seen most strongly in centrists who would rather maintain the illusion of bipartisan comity (by, say, preserving the filibuster) than actually do anything.

But yeah, the two parties are essentially two factions of the same ruling class. And, historically, capitalist ruling classes are much more amenable to fascism than socialism: compare and contrast the medias treatment of Trump(especially in 2016) vis a vis Sanders(or even Warren!) for an example.

Good on you, TC.

Hell, speaking of Marco...
Book 10 was it? When they discover the Chee, the robots the Pemalites built, and Erik wants them to get some power source/source code the Yeerks are experimenting on so the Chee can reprogram themselves to fight, and Marco straight-up dies in battle and Erik revives him after slaughtering like a dozen Hork-Bajir and a few humans, but is so distraught he tells them the Chee can't fight with them.

Speaking of Ax...
Him ambushing Visser Three as a snake was tense. Of course Visser Three bails, and Ax is left awkwardly chilling with Alloran as he slowly dies from the venom, and he straight-up begs Ax to kill him because the Yeerks will find him before the venom does it, and Ax just...can't do it.
Alloran is a really neat character, really, because he's unambiguously a war criminal, but his crime is *just* grounded enough he doesn't come off as a total monster.

You can probably test for some specific kinds of intelligence(assuming you can control for the fact that the test itself may be affecting outcomes and you accept a certain level of error), but there are a lot of kinds of intelligence that I'm not sure how you could test for. Emotional intelligence comes to mind immediately.

Yeah, it's approximately 99% lethal once it becomes symptomatic, but people have survived. Some didn't even suffer brain damage!
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/california-girl-us-survive-rabies/story?id=13830407
This is old(from 2011), but as of then, Precious Reynolds was just the third person to survive. Her case was actually on Monsters Inside Me.
The article details the best way they've come up with to deal with it: they induce a coma to slow things down, and flood the patient with antivirals. It's still an extreme long-shot, of course. It probably also helps if the bite site is on an extremity(IIRC, the Milwaukee case, the girl was bitten on her finger. It means the virus takes just a little longer to get to anything really vital.)

Anderson Cooper would be pretty great, if he were contractually obligated to be smashed during recordings.

Wow, I knew they were terrible at winning elections, but I guess they're that bad at everything!

DoctorPiranha3 posted...

Among chimps... Infanticide isn't rare.
Tribal warfare isn't rare.
But murdering a former leader and cannibalizing him is probably not common.

Yeah, thats over the top, even for them.
Just...never mess with a chimp. And never go to a bonobos party.

I cannot imagine the sheer weight of the terror she must have felt in that moment. Something like that stays with you always.

NinjaWarrior455 posted...

Why does this shitbag still keep getting high profile jobs

Because the Democratic Party is a professional organization for Democratic politicians, and Rahm knows all the right people.

This is really good.

That was an awesome series.
It manages to be incredibly violent while also avoiding glorifying violence. A lot of the fluff they packed in between the David Arc and the end was kind of lame though.
The big books (the one about Elfangor, the Ellimist, the Hork-Bajir War, the trial of the Vissers) were all great.

PoundGarden posted...

TBF how long are people supposed to live rent free? That is not sustainable. Plus once those protections end they still owe back rent so whether they get hit with the bill now or in six months is a horse apiece, they still owe that money. I don't think people realize that and letting people to go a year rent free is going to be a fuckin disaster either way once those protections end.

Well, it's less disastrous than all those people just being homeless right now, but you're absolutely correct.

I am sure the Democrats will be able to get 60 votes for a just and equitable solution to the issue. lol

I like women better, honestly. You just have to be patient and respect their space (especially if you're a man), because a lot of men just...aren't/don't.

Like I've said elsewhere, this is a ridiculous own goal by the Dems, to make what amounts to a rounding error on the stimulus bill, both making it slightly worse and opening the door to disingenuous yet true and devastatingly simple attacks.

It's like they're allergic to winning and delivering.

Its just such a ridiculous own-goal, in messaging terms.
Its like Democrats like sputtering convoluted, inadequate explanations to clear, concise attacks. And many voters arent going to know/care that Republicans would rather give them nothing.

Cowthief posted...

We used to follow animals to death. That's how we got to the top of the food chain. We're not particularly strong, but we can do long distance hikes like the best of them. We'd tag an animal with a spear and then chase them for miles until they dropped dead from exhaustion/fright.

Literally the boogeyman of the animal world

Hunter-gatherers in places like Africa even bury water skins by easily-memorable landmarks, so they can stay hydrated even during sweltering mid-day hunts(and being underground even keeps the water cool!).
Meanwhile, that dumb ass wildebeast is probably thirsty as hell while its bleeding out.

Boombam99 posted...

Who the fuck names their son Armie Hammer

Its actually short for Armand.
Guess what hes an heir to!

Being bitten by something is highly likely to transmit an infection, a fact obvious to our ancestors. Of course, they didnt understand the exact mechanism, so they came up with an explanation that fit with their understanding of the world.

Get over it.

Ruvan22 posted...

As much as we celebrate 2020 being behind us, make sure we are realistic in our hopes for 2021!

Yeah, the nature of team means things will still be bad for quite a while. Hopefully, we'll be able to look back and see the turning point where things got better.

Everyone's in here discussing this, and here I am, watching, wondering what difference it makes. Depicting any race as purely evil, corrupted, deformed, etc. is deeply problematic and suggests a worrying world view regardless of what exact real world prejudices animate it.

"Won't anyone think of the millionaire hedge fund ghouls who got defrauded by a bunch of Internet trolls?"
I'm sad there are people who would unironically believe that statement(minus the "ghouls"), as though this isn't standard practice and it's only being cracked down here because the wrong people are getting screwed.

whitelytning posted...

1. Shrink the size of the district to just the important buildings around the capital/supreme court/white House.
2. Let Virginia have the city of DC (they probably don't want it).
3. Make PR a state.

Actually, the land that Washington D.C. sits on was ceded by Maryland: the land Virginia ceded was retrocessed prior to the Civil War. Of course, neither Washington D.C. nor Maryland want retrocession, which seems like a pretty firm argument against it.
The solution is to make it a state. It won't happen because it will get filibustered and Joe Manchin would literally file the motion for one of his Republican colleagues if they were, for some reason, unable to do so themselves he literally filed such a motion for Sen. Isakson against his own legislation, IIRC.

I love animals. Weve really given them short shrift for a long time. Im phone-posting, so no pics, but Ill share a silly fact:
Flower nectar occasionally ferments, and bees that drink it appear to get drunk and behave erratically, so beehives post bouncers to chase off drunk bees until they sober up.

So much for Trump losing bringing the GOP "back to its senses", whatever those were.

Whole Foods has frozen fire-roasted corn, which is really good. I break that out when I'm in the mood.

Also good with butter on the cob, but that's definitely a treat. Corn contains a good deal of starch, but also fiber and a nice range of vitamins and minerals, so it's not bad for you unless it's been reduced to corn syrup.
You just need to eat more good things aside from corn(the North American peoples commonly grew it with squash and beans for a reason).

Monolith1676 posted...

This is why the recall effort is picking up so much steam.

From the other coast, it seems stunning how poorly Newsome is handling....everything. Like, he makes Andrew Cuomo look sort of competent!
Recall his ass and fire it into the sun(or Arizona, I guess).

Garioshi posted...

do you know about ancient greece

It was common to have a statue of Hermes with a comically huge dick in your garden in Athens, IIRC.

Yeah, it sucks, but it was also utterly predictable that Manchin, Sinema, Coons, etc. would give Lucy another chance. Garbage in, garbage out.

They can still do stimulus via reconciliation, but they can only use that once per year or something like that(and the Mitch Fan Club Caucus is clearly not going to bend the rules). Reconciliation is limited and will reduce the stimulus.

All of this arcane Senate procedure nonsense is basically unknown to voters, just FYI. The Dems will pay a steep political price for this.