Lurker > the_rowan

Strider102 posted...

Wasn't there a Republican who said something like "Even the kids are terrorists" or something to that effect?

...They are literally trained in school on how to be terrorists, yes. They are taught in class how to make and use explosives, wield and transport weapons, and explicitly told they should kill Jews. The indoctrination starts in kindergarten. There are recordings of kindergarteners practicing mock military operations and hostage-taking. That is the kind of world that Gaza is. The median age there is about 18 years old, and about 40% of the population is 14 or younger.

It's absolutely awful and completely unfair to judge the kids for this, but this is the explanation of why a soldier can look at a child there and fear for their life or question if the object they are holding is a bomb.

Again, proving the average person on this board has had their head in the sand for the last 30 years when it comes to this region.

Revelation34 posted...

Cattle and chickens would still be killed because they would wind up like deer and need to be culled. They are both too domesticated to survive on their own.

Okay? I'm not sure what your point is. Simply reducing the rate of breeding is sufficient to achieve a lower population in the long run.

Revelation34 posted...

So only vegans want there to be lab grown meat?

Not sure how you drew that conclusion? I would say it's more the inverse, that only people who have an extremely narrow viewpoint (or profit off the current model and could not profit from lab-grown meat, but that's a different matter) would not be open to lab-grown meat as an option.

I have not been closely following the development of the technology, but anything that pushes the meat industry towards something with less environmental impact, less harm to animals, and lower costs is a win for me. Turning cattle rearing back into a smaller practice where the health of individual animals can be better maintained and monitored could be a win for health and safety as well, although there is the risk that the lab process would just open itself up to the same sorts of dangerous shortcuts as other industries, or counterfeiting, so it's not without risk (because corporate and individual greed manages to make everything suck).

Good thing he's there to keep options open for people. Imagine walking into a restaurant and having to order a good old-fashioned burger while expertly dodging the option for the lab-grown meat, then having to fight off an army of angry liberals as you carry it out to your car. There might even someday be a world where you have to teach your kids to sense the aura that comes from the death of a thinking being when you select your steaks, since they're otherwise physically identical to fake hippie lab meat that will make your dick fall off.

Garioshi posted...

If they cared about the hostages, they were handed them on a silver platter.

Again: are you insane? You just casually allow a terrorist cell to kill over a thousand people and walk away without consequences because they took hostages?

There is literally no way you are arguing in good faith. Literally any nation on earth would be in up in revolution if their government accepted a hostage deal like that. You are basically waving a green flag for every rogue faction to do whatever the hell it wants to you as long as they keep some hostages each time. You are also assuming good faith from fucking HAMAS, you know, the terrorist organization that has no political accountability since it's not a national government, with absolutely no history of honoring ceasefires, with a mission statement of annihilating your entire nation.

Israel could viably try to negotiate from that offer towards "We also want total disarmament" (although they'd never get it and thus negotiations would just be a waste of time in an urgent situation), but just taking a hostage deal in exchange for no response to an attack of that scale is so absolutely irresponsible that even the most peace-loving governments would be unable to take it.

Like if this was a hostage negotiation over abducting a bus of people in the West Bank or something, then it's absolutely on the table for Israel to accept demands for their release. But no nation can just not respond after such a massive breach of public safety.

Ah yes, it's totally a viable political stance to just sit on your laurels after a massive terrorist attack shakes your entire nation. You'll get the hostages they took back and everything will be right as rain!

Are you all actually insane or something?

They were some of my first PC games. I played through 1 through 7 (sold as a bundle) with a guide as a kid. (It was still very difficult for me even with the guide at that age. Would have been basically impossible without, except for 7.)

Pretty nifty series. I've heard there are remastered versions (possibly fan-made?) that have removed all the possible softlocks and adjusted some things to be less crazy obtuse, but I don't really know much about them.

Doing evil things that have consequence in the game world is really, really uncomfortable to me. Even though it's fiction, if it feels like I'm hurting innocent people, it really gets to me and makes me not want to continue with it.

Doing "evil" things like stealing, pickpocketing, looting homes, etc., where there's no actual consequence programmed into the game for the affected and everyone just goes on with their lives as normal, doesn't bug me. It's just a gameplay element that lets you play with stealth a bit, in that case.

Jaguar34 posted...

Be for real

People who want lower taxes

That's a lot of people

Trump's tax cuts only benefitted corporate shareholders. Workers got absolutely fucked. Even corporate growth or change for sustainability or innovation didn't actually occur because all that corporations are incentived to do is funnel money to the rich.

Your average citizen gets more paid to them from higher taxes than they pay into them.

No one, because money for yourself is not the only thing that matters in the world. The US's reputation in the world would be scarred. The entire election process would be harmed. The US would veer further towards unsustainable corporate practices. Education would slip further. Civil right and basic human rights would be attacked to an even greater degree.

It does not matter if you are rich. You live in a society. If that society crumbles around you, you will be dragged down with it. Any random middle-class person in the US could go be rich in a third-world hellhole of a nation, but it's not desirable because then you're in a hellhole.

The mechanics of the game are really good. Using the right status effects or immunities can absolutely destroy bosses. Strategies and combos allow for a lot more tactical, purposeful play than just fighting every battle, getting a bunch of levels, and pressing the "big damage" and "big healing" buttons in alternation until you win. It's really amazing for a LLG or challenge runs for this reason.

I played the GBA version, which had a fun and lighthearted script with a good translation/localization. Not sure how it is in newer versions compared to that and which is considered the best.

For comparison, I did not like FFIV or FFVII but did like FFVI quite a bit. I have replayed FFV the most of any Final Fantasy game.

From the beginning, it had separate triangles for Power and Wisdom, although Courage didn't exist until AoL. In the original game, Ganon stole Power and shattered Wisdom, and Link had to reunite Wisdom so it could be used against him. In AoL, Link has to find Courage in order to save Zelda from a cursed sleep, and the other two parts aren't present.

OoT added the whole destined bearers thing, where anyone trying to claim the triforce could only do so if their heart was in balance. Otherwise, they would keep whatever they believed in most strongly, and the other two pieces would go to their respective destined bearers. OoT doesn't explicitly say that Ganon(dorf) is the destined wielder of Power, just that he stole it by grabbing the Triforce first, but no mention of any other destined bearer of Power has ever come up, and probably never will.

In the Adult Timeline (Wind Waker), Ganon still has the Triforce of Power, but the Triforce is united and disappears at the end of the game. In the Downfall Timeline, Ganon has the whole Triforce, but Zelda seals him away again despite this until he is freed during ALttP.

So if there was a destined bearer of the Triforce of Power before Ganondorf grabbed it in OoT, they would have to come up in the Child Timeline. (It is worth noting that in TP, the only Child Timeline game since MM, no mention of any of the main trio having part of the Triforce is ever made.)

There is one game where you actually do collect all three parts of the Triforce and assemble the whole thing, and that game is Skyward Sword.

LonelyStoner posted...

Cis is a gender

Neither cis nor trans are genders so much as they are qualifying adjectives that are often attached to genders.

Lord_Ephraim posted...

If someone didn't buy Remake, they're not going to buy Rebirth even if Rebirth is considered a much better game. Players don't feel obligated to play Rebirth until they play Remake, and you still have those who are holding out until every single piece of the Final Fantasy 7 remake compilation is out. Not to mention those who played Remake and didn't like it aren't going to have their minds changed if Rebirth got a better metacritic.

You missed the very important point that Remake (non-Intergrade version) was free on PS Plus a couple years ago, which means it had a large number of players who didn't purchase the game. I'm assuming those players are not counted in the sales figures, at least. There has to be a sizable portion of this player base that is largely interested in the game a bit, but not enough to buy a PS5 for it or pay full price for the game.

StealThisSheen posted...

This one will presumedly learn and evolve on its own, instead of having bands/etc. manually input. Basically, not any noticeable difference to the actual consumer, other than being able to be more specific.

My experience with these types of products so far is that they tend to be pretty terrible for looking for niche or specific things, but do fine if you're looking for the same thing that a lot of people look for or are not particularly specific in what you want to end up with.

Questions like "music that will make me feel x" can't possibly work unless you react to a piece the same way most other people do, so that sort of thing is basically just going to be pulling from a recommended list like already exist.

wackyteen posted...

I can't think of a feature I would want to use less. Chopping off my left leg sounds more appealing than using AI to generate playlists.

I mean, this is basically just a more robust version of finding a playlist like you'd find with any other search query. Really, that's exactly what it is: a search engine, except trained for associations beyond literally finding the word you entered in the results.

More context needed. Swords are god tier in Jugdral, but terrible in Elibe. In Tellius and Fodlan, they're only good for a short while at the start of the game.

I'll just go with my tried-and-true Charge Blade I guess.

Is anyone actually making significant progress with true AI right now? Or is it all still LLMs that do not attempt to actually be AI and may just some day become part of the toolset used when creating an AI?

Because LLMs have done nothing but disappoint me so far. AI-based searching is so much worse than just finding discussions by actual humans using the words I was looking for, and that's become so much harder to do in the last few years.

Pizza sort of cheats in the same way that french fries do by having a ton of components that trigger chemical responses that tell our brain that we should eat more of this. Between the casesin in the cheese, carbs from the crust, added sugars in the sauce, fats and salt, it all triggers a response similar to an opioid in how the brain feels about it.

It's definitely a fantastic food if you discount the health cost of eating it. If you're looking for the best food that balances health and taste, it's probably some type of Asian dish, but pizza is pretty universally loved if you're just going for taste.

Spinach, garlic, fresh tomato and feta is my favorite topping set when I want something a little more refreshing than greasy pepperoni, but classic pepperoni is still really good and an easy way to satisfy the vast majority of people.

For me, "Are some games of solitaire impossible?" becomes the top result when I put in the 'm' in 'games' and is not in the results at all until then, if you want an idea of how much influence viewing this topic has had.

NoMeLx22x posted...

To add to this, if the Israel military is so fucking bad that they keep unintentionally killing Civilians, maybe we should stop giving them equipment money and bombs until with think they are trained enough to use them without having an oopsie and murdering a bunch of innocent people.

Of course, that won't happen, because the murdering of civilians is a feature not a bug.

All right buddy, you go launch an offensive against an enemy that is launching rockets from apartment buildings and schools and actively uses civilians as shields because they know it loses you support if those civilians die, and they just consider them martyrs who get rewarded in the afterlife. You have to stop all the attacks against your own populace and have a duty to protect your soldiers, but you're not allowed to hurt civilians when you raid or bomb the enemy's bases in the same buildings that civilians are using.

I'm fully aware that Israeli soldiers have done awful things to civilians, but the sheer stupidity of the whole "Israel needs to stop killing civilians with their bombs" ideology is mindnumbing. Israel is the side using shaped munitions designed to minimize collateral damage, not the rockets designed to kill as many people as possible. Israel is the side that announces their movements to try to get people to evacuate. People seem to be willing to believe literally every negative thing Hamas publishes about Israel's actions without questioning it, which seems absolutely insane to me, since this is a group that very publicly states their intent to murder and posts videos of themselves beheading civilians, and then when video evidence is released that shows that Israel did what they said they did all along, it gets ignored.

Until they actually make it like Rivals did, they're just all talk and no action. Rivals even had twelve characters to ask out.

For 3, the game curves EXP sharply, so it is pretty easy to have units who are behind on exp catch up, as long as they fight next to units strong enough to carry the squad as a whole. Because of this, there really isn't anything to lose by using Josef as much or as little as you want. He can trivialize a lot of the early game for you and let you do missions "out of order" a bit (e.g. you're supposed to get some anti-magic units before you do Auch's mission, and the game will try to warn you, but Joseph can just hard carry the mission with his crazy stats and ability to protect his squad from magic assists).

However, Josef is designed like a Jagen in the sense that he has horrible stats for his level. He is also specifically given an incredibly lopsided growth curve where he gets very, very poor stat gains for his first 20 or so level-ups, but absolutely stupid stat gains for his last few levels (think 3 or even 5 points per stat per level) so he suddenly ends up being appropriately statted for postgame (not better than everyone else, but on par), should you want to use the Paladin class at that point (which you may no longer have any interest in). He can also be used in the midgame for things that don't rely on stats as much, like throwing out Holy Shield and heals, but there are a lot of much more impressive supports you'll get that make this pretty lackluster.

Having played against A a lot in early Final Fantasy games... it's definitely not A. C sounds mandatory to cure unless you're doing LLG type strats where you nullify all damage anyway.

Ricemills posted...

This makes it clear, US goal is always an instability on the region. They don't want peace.

The absolute comical level of ignorance in stances like this...
You really think the outcome of Israel failing to win its war here is "peace"?
You think ceasing to arm Israel results in everyone in the region holding hands, rather than immediately showing what genocide actually looks like as Israel ceases to exist almost overnight in a bloody massacre?
There is a very good reason that people who know more about the history here than headlines from the short time Israel was on the offensive don't consider disarming Israel when they're looking at ways to lessen the damage to civilians.

I think this is largely a matter of the tone of the game. If the game is attempting to be serious and grounded, it's fine to have characters of diverse body proportions, but there should be some parallels to real life in that diversity, rather than everyone having super sexualized bodies, unless you're in a setting where there would be reason for this to be different. Characters who perform feats of athleticism should be fit, characters who use sex appeal as a tool for themselves should look that way, and so on, but you should be able to go into an office building and be greeted by a secretary or administrative assistant who is there because they are competent and professional, not one who reinforces stereotypes.

But if you're in a setting where everything is absolutely ridiculous and over-the-top, it's fine to just make everyone hot. If your game has guys with ridiculous blue hair and fifteen belts, I really don't think people should be offended if they have an open shirt and toned chest. Similarly, if the women can teleport around throw kicks so fast their legs turn into blurs, I don't think there's really room to complain about an unrealistic bust size.

Post 0x10B

I love Thai food, but pad thai is one of the more boring Thai dishes IMO.

Double the posts, double the chances.

Good luck me I guess.

(for the most common definitions of these words; each has another definition that is the opposite)

Tyranthraxus posted...

I'm not seeing a huge difference between the two statements.

The big difference is when you ask Israel to take the wall down, you have to add in "Oh, and hundreds to thousands more civilians will die every year" as a bullet point.

It didn't used to be this way.
Then Arafat rejected a pretty generous two-state solution, with massive international support from both the Clinton administration and many Arab countries. This then triggered mass rioting, gunfighting, suicide bombings, and rocket attacks, which lasted for years.
This is the point where Israel built the West Bank barrier.
Associating the barrier with "racism" in the sense of "I hate them and don't want them here because they're foreign" and not "We don't want them here because some portion of them blow up busses" is a pretty false dichotomy.

Someone claimed it and didn't say.
Most likely a bot since TC posted a completely unobscured plain text key.