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Comments
IJBM: People assuming a double standard when there's no evidence that the people making statement A are the same people making statement B when the two statements contradict one another.
It was my birthday yesterday. I got a fruit cake.
Sigh.
Eh, after a certain point in life you just stop getting things on your birthday. All mine ever tend to amount to are me going to get a slice of cheesecake for myself, a good diner and maybe whatever book/videogame I wanted to buy.
Hi. Thought I should start spending more time here again, especially as I've now managed to get myself tempbanned from SA for a day for annoying their feminist thread.
It was basically my fault, but I'm still a bit sore about it. Most of the ex-tropers I know who went there seem to have run into some kind of trouble or to not be posting as much.
^^ Yeah. I turned 22 a few days ago and it was kinda just there. I got a few things and appreciated them, but I suppose I've stopped caring that much, too.
I suppose when we're children, with little to no control over our lives, receiving material goods is pretty sweet. They represent diversifying one's engagement with the limitations placed upon oneself. A new game is a way to escape the lack of trust or responsibility placed on a child concerning anything outside their immediate self care. But starting sometime in my teens, I lost interest in material goods because I realised they no longer provided the same diversion or extension of will.
Basically, material goods stopped having inherent emotional value, especially concerning with incoming matters of adulthood. If I could have something on my birthday, it would be far better to receive security, stability or any manner of other abstracts that would help me grow and excel in this new state of being.
That said, I'm seldom comfortable being the centre of attention, either, and I'm in no hurry to grow old. Birthdays might have been a neat enough excuse to party, but honestly I haven't had a birthday party for myself since I was 11 anyway. So I suppose some of this is pretty personal, given my aversion to attention. At the same time, though, birthdays will devalue into adulthood until you're supposed to be dead, at which point they will being to revalue and become hot shit again.
^ Hey, Cap'n. If I had a comment to make about the SA forums, I'd say that they don't seem to be that friendly to newer members, nor do they avoid the problem of having X% of their population being composed of major assholes. Put these together and, from an exterior or newbie's point of view, much of the forums can seem pretty intimidating. Speaking with confidence and authority there, it seems, is subject to many rules of privilege.
Gah, 1AM and not asleep...doing Tumblr stuff again.
>Get up early, no hangover, yay
>Decide to go sporting before breakfast
>Get to sports centre, nobody at counter
>Computer terminal in corridor
Why does it always go like this with good intentions.
>Just about done, I can has breakfast
>Complains how hard it was on Facebook like the first world problem it is
>Get motivational 'peptalk' from someone who I know moonlights as a dominatrix
There goes my appetite.
> sporting
> before breakfast
well there's your problem
who the hell engages in strenuous activity before eating
But seriously, I think the ideal time for physical activity is shortly before lunch or shortly before dinner. Burn it up, eat well and let your body repair damage and rest easy with a good meal.
Guys, I need some unbiased opinions on a issue currently going on in Serbia.
Say that a large foreign company opens their business in a town, and does a lot to reduce the unemployment, revitalize the town's economy and thus help the population. Is it acceptable to, under initiative from the majority of the town's population, raise a humongous monument of the logo of said company on the entrance to the town?
I personally dislike the idea, since it reeks too much of corporatism, but I'd like to hear some unbiased opinions.
> asking a bunch of leftists
> "unbiased"
I disagree with it. Is it awesome that they've made such a contribution? Fuck yeah it is. But it's not worth identifying the town by that corporation. Identifying a town by its primary industry is one thing, but associating it with one particular corporation is another altogether. That corporation wasn't really there to help anyone -- it was there to turn a profit, and in this case it seems they've done that as a mutual benefactor. If capitalism has to be the system we live under, then let that be the good story we hear more of, but it doesn't really undo the dangers of loyalty to an organisation that exists to profit.
Benefits: beginning the day with exercising kicks your metabolism up a notch for the rest of the day, helps you wake up and become active, and kills of the usual slacktastic morning routine.
Played Summon Night: Swordcraft Story for a few hours. Or, as I call it, since I got Sugar as my Guardian Beast, Summon Night: A One Sided Lesbian Love Story.
Mapcrunch is a really addicting website but for some reason it keeps sending me to Macao
"Hi. Thought I should start spending more time here again, especially as I've now managed to get myself tempbanned from SA for a day for annoying their feminist thread.
It was basically my fault, but I'm still a bit sore about it. Most of the ex-tropers I know who went there seem to have run into some kind of trouble or to not be posting as much."
Nearly everyone seems to get tempbanned from SA at one point or another. If it's only one day, I think you got off easy.
I was in the bus. One station after me, a girl, obviously a drug addict, entered. She wore a dirty, tattered trenchcoat, ripped jeans and grimy sneakers. Her hair was (very badly) dyed red, her face was all sullen and unhealthy and she was sickly thin. She literally crawled to a seat, took her phone and messed around on it for a while, probably texting. When she finished, she just kept staring at one fixed point. Then, suddenly, her head fell on her shoulder. It looked like she was sleeping.
Some twenty minutes afterwards, a dog ran in front of the bus so the driver made a sharp brake. Everyone jumped from their seats, and so did the girl, but she just kept lying on the floor, not moving even the slightest. The other passengers all looked at her, but none of us reacted or seemed to care. The whole experience left me much colder than I would've thought. I reacted with much more curiosity than shock, and so did the other passengers. I'm not sure what to make of that.
Don't forget to take into account shock, though. The horror might not have set in yet (unless this wasn't recent)
I just did. It was OK.
^^ It happened just a bit more than an hour ago.
It made me contemplate a lot about death, but I still feel very calm. It probably has something to do with the fact that, when I see an overdosed person, the first thing that passes through my head is "they're going to die", so her death didn't come as that much of a surprise. But I remember that, about a year ago, when an old woman suddenly passed out in the bus and it looked like she was dead, I was pretty shocked, even though she turned out to be alive.
^^Better than strenuous activity after eating.
For all our wars and personal skirmishes, human beings aren't well-accustomed to death -- or violence -- on a personal level. Many species of animals are indifferent to a death that isn't directly familial, but to witness a death first-hand and leave the experience disturbed is very human. I suspect most of the people on that bus went home feeling the same way, Milos.
Hits a bit closer to home for me, I have to admit. My older brother has been addicted to heroine in the past, and he has technically, for medical intents and purposes, been dead. Revived in the nick of time, mind, but his drug addiction nearly cost him his life on more than one occasion for a variety of reasons. What we'll do to one-another isn't always as awful as what we'll do to ourselves, I suppose.
:< I'm sorry to hear about what your brother had passed through. Did he manage to get his lfe back together?
He's currently in jail, so not really.
It's pretty frustrating, because he had and continues to hold such potential. He got me into stuff like Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, anime in general, fantasy, mythology -- a bunch of stuff that informs the way I process information and the values I hold. He held a job at the National Gallery of Victoria a few years back, despite having prior criminal charges. It's kind of insane that he acquired a job as a gallery tour guide at such a prestigious art gallery with no post-secondary education and his criminal history. He also got me my first job.
A damned shame.
For context, he's my half-brother. Fifteen years my elder and of a different father. We've never seen it like that, though. As far back as I remember, he's simply been my brother. He was a troubled kid, though, and primarily in my mother's care. He wanted to go off and live with his father for a while, which my mother allowed. She didn't know that his father had become a heroine addict, though, and my older brother soon enough went down his father's footsteps.
If that one thing hadn't happened, things could have gone so well for my older brother. He's charismatic, open-minded and creative. Right now, he's almost forty years old -- he'll be thirty-seven later this year. Things are going to be tough for him, forging ahead with no degree, criminal charges and a troubled family history at that age. I have no idea what he'll end up doing, but I daresay, things being merciful, he'll end up doing something a bit nonstandard.
Before he went to jail this time, he expressed a desire to get tertiary education in community work. Helping those with drug problems and all that. Goodness knows he has the experience and the knowledge. I hope he goes through with that, but I think he's excel while finding it very rewarding. We'll see, I guess.
Thank you for the sentiment, Milos, by the way.
Alex and Abyss_Worm - Thanks for the kind (and true) words. And I hope your brother can sort himself out, Alex. Probably overcoming his drug addiction is the first step, but he's lucky to have your support.
There is no need to thank me, words are cheap.
Hope that life goes well for your brother and he manages to finally get his life back together.
oh hey, it's the Cap. Long time no see /Didn't actually see the top of the page
And yeah, best of luck to your brother (and you, for that matter), Alex.
That's really a bummer Alex. Has... I dunno, jail helped your brother to detox from heroin and try to break the habit? Best of luck to him when he gets out, and I'm sure you'll find some way to help him if you can.
That said, new avatar because Bachalo drawn Rogue is great. Okay Bachalo drawn anything is great, but w/e. And Angry Birds: Space is really fun. I'm wondering if the Red Bird's glasses are just dorky sci fi glasses or dorky Kamina homage glasses.
Also, heh. I've discovered some folks are using Amazon's star rating system to sneak positive reviews into 1 star posts under the logic that people are more likely to read a 1 star review than a 5 star review. Now to see if I can find any 5 star reviews that go on and on about how the item in question sucks.
On a brighter note, a new episode of Extra Credits.
The episode basically covers transgaming. Let me explain.
Some of you will be familiar with the term "transmedia". This is when a narrative concept, world, set of characters ect. are explored through a variety of media. When a movie gets a video game tie-in, that's transmedia. When a game gets a (probably awful) film, also transmedia. In more intelligent cases (such as Pokemon), when a game and TV show are released side-by-side? Transmedia.
It's essentially spreading the narrative appeal of something over different media or mediums, and the best transmedia allows one to access different parts of the fictional setting. For instance, The Witcher games take place after the end of the last book, giving us an insight into the events and developments that were otherwise never going to be covered. Or better yet, Knights of the Old Republic is a Star Wars game the occurs thousands of years before the films, giving us insight into not only different events, but a different age of technology, social relations, politics and an entirely different set of characters.
Given all the book tie-ins, film deals, action figures and whatnot, transmedia has been a huge deal in the gaming industry of late, but the industry might be verging on the next step. Transgaming is different. It's when two different games interact with one-another on a technical level. This can be as simple as importing a save from a previous game in a sequential series. It can go much further than that -- what if games of different genres, but in the same setting, could interact with one-another? That's what the episode explores.
Think about this example. What if your friend loves strategy games, but you love action games? His game of Dawn of War might interact with your Space Marine, presuming two games were made with transgaming interaction in mind. While he directs the troops around you, you're personally running around kicking ass and blowing everything sky high. Sure, this requires a fair amount of resources for something like a PC and might be limiting when it comes to console games, but the continued popularity of casual titles and MMOs like World of Warcraft prove that a significant portion of consumers can and will ignore limited graphics if the game experience is strong.
We could have Malk playing a vampire overlord game while I play a monster hunting game, where the actions he takes while I'm asleep influence the obstacles I'll face when I play the next day. Juan might be playing a different game again, finding and feeding me information about the dangers I'll be exposed to. I think we've all had this dream of a game that's actually multiple games, but it could become a reality sometime in the next five years or so -- and if it does, that's far more than any of us would have expected, even as children.