I haven't read the books and I've only seen maybe four episodes, but this drama around finishing Winds of Winter has gotten a lot of press over the years. About a year ago I had an epiphany. I was thinking about how Martin hadn't released a single page of Game of Thrones text since the first tv episode was released—almost 15 years ago! And that made me realize this wasn't just about pressure or him having a high standard. For whatever reasons, the show effectively killed the books for Martin. I didn't need a press statement from him to confirm that.

Cutter wrote on Sep 20, 2024, 19:49:
I don't think that's a very good test as I would say turquoise is blue-green - or vice versa - anyway. From teh interwebs..."Is turquoise in the blue or green category? Turquoise is a shade of blue that lies on the scale between blue and green. It has characteristics associated with both of these, such as the calmness of blue and the growth that is represented in green. Turquoise can also has the energy that yellow transmits, becoming an uplifting color." Being forced to choose one of the other when it's really neither is ridiculous. If you can't distinguish between primary colors like navy blue and forest green, then you'd have an argument.

I agree with you and at first thought it doesn't say much about ability to perceive color. That said, the more I think about it, I think it does say something about our mental conception of what color to assign, nominally, to the shade directly in between green and blue. Assuming the graph that's presented represents the cumulative results of previous test takers, notice that the vast majority of people will look at the color right in between blue and green and call it blue. I think that's interesting. To be right in the dead middle in between green and blue, you'd have to be right about at the 85th percentile, just like Mr. Blue, himself (no pun intended). I thought I knew that I was tending to call turquoise green (I was thinking, well, that's as much blue as green, but I'd call that sea green, so let's go with "green"), yet even I tended to refer to the color directly in between green and blue as "blue" (I came in at the 75th percentile, and my line of demarcation between green and blue is slightly left of center, i.e., towards green).

If I'm interpreting this test correctly, the cumulative results suggest that the vast majority of people will refer to the color directly in between green and blue as "blue". It must be overwhelmingly green for them to call it "green". In my own case, that may be because my mental conception of green is more narrowly defined than blue. I wouldn't have known that had I not taken the test myself.

RedEye9 wrote on Jan 19, 2024, 21:54:

Saboth wrote on Jan 19, 2024, 21:43:
All signs point to a DA who wants to make a name for themselves.

That's the first thing that came to my mind.
This has been going on for over 2 years, sounds like the DA is up for reelection.

This was decided by a grand jury, so how is that a sign that the DA wanted to make a name for themselves?

Agreed. I can't help but remember back when Epic's marketing spiel was about how Valve charges too high of a percentage. That's easy to say for a storefront that operates at a loss (regardless if it's true to at least some extent).

fujiJuice wrote on May 24, 2023, 23:45:

Rokkuu wrote on May 24, 2023, 21:27:
You do know that a core tenant of fascism is forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism and does not support free speech.

Twitter is selective speech. Elon gets to select the speech he likes.

selection7 wrote on May 24, 2023, 22:49:
Don't forget the promotion of workers unions, the massive social welfare programs, and the co-opting of the free market economy to serve the interests of the nation over the individual. So, you see, those three guys really do remind one of a facis.... hey, wait??

I would imagine most people are referring to authoritarianism and ultra-nationalism when discussing fascism.

Not unions and welfare.

Exactly! And that's the problem. Authoritarianism couldn't be further from the "don't tread on me" right-wing. In the US, I do think ultra-Nationalism is more typically right-wing because, at least in 2023, mild nationalism and even run of the mill patriotism is, but, more importantly, the most dangerous kind of ultra-nationalism has always gone hand in hand with authoritarianism, which, to tie this back in with the original posts, is nearly 180° from of what Elon says he is doing with Twitter.

FYI, the things I previously mentioned were also all core elements of the rule of either Mussolini, Hitler, or Marxism, and yet, if posed as trivia question to random passerbys on the street, how many would answer correctly? I'd like to think many would at least correctly answer that fascism is anti-free speech, but I'd probably be wrong Heck, 'fascist' might just be the single most misused word (of importance) in modern society. To be fair, fascism is multifaceted, not simple and one-dimensional, but, no, I don't think Post #2 was joking, and I so agree it was worth pointing out. After all, this is all pretty important stuff. Why?
Literally millions have died and been oppressed at the hands of fascism, authoritarianism, and the lack of free communication that could have served as a warning. The info's out there guys. And it's okay to use Wikipedia, but in 2023, you must take the time and actually vet what you read. Don't just stop the instant you get the answer that doesn't challenge your previously held beliefs! And if we all do that, we'll be putting free speech into action, which I consider to be our civic duty.

Rokkuu wrote on May 24, 2023, 21:27:

Burrito of Peace wrote on May 24, 2023, 20:31:
Because fascists love the idea of fascism? Just a wild guess.

You do know that a core tenant of fascism is forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism and does not support free speech.
Looks like twitter is open for all types of people to freely and openly communicate their thoughts and opinions. Quite Anti Facist to be honest.

Don't forget the promotion of workers unions, the massive social welfare programs, and the co-opting of the free market economy to serve the interests of the nation over the individual. So, you see, those three guys really do remind one of a facis.... hey, wait??

Yeah, 'cause if there's one thing that doesn't move the needle for gamers, it's releasing great games for them to play.
Wait a second, what??

I guess it's technically possible he could be right, but he's basically saying gamers who buy consoles are idiots (or at least, blindly loyal to either Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony). In my case, as a PC gamer, I don't buy any consoles precisely because the games I want to play are on PC. So for me, it's literally about what I think makes games great. If games on Sony had the qualities I consider to be the best/greatest*, then I'd game on a Sony console instead of PC.

*I'm referring to the types of games, e.g. tactical and strategy and first person, as well as extremely customizable settings, mods, and the use of mouse and keyboard as the overwhelming default input device. Not so much the literal game titles, although PC may win that battle too since it eventually gets most Microsoft exclusives and even some Sony ones.

jdreyer wrote on Apr 17, 2023, 22:52:
Aaaaand watch pizza delivery dude get sued by the criminal for damages.

just what I was thinking

Sepharo wrote on Mar 27, 2023, 04:12:

selection7 wrote on Mar 27, 2023, 03:59:

Sepharo wrote on Mar 27, 2023, 03:06:

selection7 wrote on Mar 27, 2023, 03:05:

Sepharo wrote on Mar 27, 2023, 01:27:
Sounds like everyone learned an important lesson.
Chris learned to stop sleeping with cosplayers at conventions, lest something like this happen.
And the women who found him creepy learned they need to be very very specific about how exactly he's creepy, lest a lawsuit like this happens.

What cosplayers?

The women in the lawsuit.
You should read it.

Was she supposedly ever in costume at a convention with Chris? [...] Also, I don't think you should besmirch cosplayers! [...] I get why you might think they're a little nutty, but they're mostly good people.

What the hell are you talking about?
I did no such thing.

Hey, cool it with the coarse language! (There are ladies on this board. )
I thought maybe you were a cos-player hater because you suggested a lesson to be learned is not to sleep with cosplayers. And I quote: "...stop sleeping with cosplayers at conventions, lest something like this happen." I was thinking to myself, what makes cosplayers any different from anyone else? Why single them out unless Sepharo thinks they can't be trusted? Kind of like, 'should've known better than to go down a dark alley', except cosplayers are no 'dark alley', they're mostly good people. It was a strange statement, either way. But also, ...

What about my question about whether they were cosplaying at a convention with Chris?
And, well, I'll just re-paste it:
What about my question about the ladies not needing to be overtly specific, but just truthful, instead? Agreed?

Sepharo wrote on Mar 27, 2023, 03:06:

selection7 wrote on Mar 27, 2023, 03:05:

Sepharo wrote on Mar 27, 2023, 01:27:
Sounds like everyone learned an important lesson.
Chris learned to stop sleeping with cosplayers at conventions, lest something like this happen.
And the women who found him creepy learned they need to be very very specific about how exactly he's creepy, lest a lawsuit like this happens.

What cosplayers?

The women in the lawsuit.
You should read it.

Ah, thanks. I did read quite a lot about it some time ago, but never came across her being a cosplayer. Was she supposedly ever in costume at a convention with Chris? Either way, Chris never slept with Karissa or Kelly, and to his knowledge, has never even met Kelly.
Also, I don't think you should besmirch cosplayers! No doubt the vast majority who've started intimate relationships based on their "con" adventures have never done anything like what Karissa and Kelly did. I get why you might think they're a little nutty, but they're mostly good people.

What about my question about the ladies not needing to be overtly specific, but just truthful, instead? Agreed?

Citizen P wrote on Mar 26, 2023, 19:46:
How wonderful, those who have genuine cases of abuse now have more stacked against them because some people wanted to take advantage of change that should have been for the better.

I agree it seems this way. Maybe it is. But this has been a sort of low-profile Depp-Heard case, except the accusers learned from the Heard case and didn't let it go to trial, and there's an important similarity in the outcome. If you consider the zeitgeist of the me-too movement that we were in for a while, it was a revolution, but still quite nascent. I like to think that both of these cases have helped that movement to start to grow up from the foolishness of a "believe all women" buzz phrase to something more productive.
Which is to say, that period was never going to last, as if stuck in time, and we wouldn't want it to. In that sense, these cases have been a big step forward in the evolution of protecting the public from predators. Glass half full, I know.

Sepharo wrote on Mar 27, 2023, 01:27:
Sounds like everyone learned an important lesson.
Chris learned to stop sleeping with cosplayers at conventions, lest something like this happen.
And the women who found him creepy learned they need to be very very specific about how exactly he's creepy, lest a lawsuit like this happens.

What cosplayers?
Also, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that the women learned to not outright make false statements with malice? After all, they really didn't need to be specific at all about how he was creepy. "He gave me the heebie jeebies." or "Something's not right about him—dangerous even." are both very generic statements that wouldn't have resulted in them having to payout a ton of money to avoid the repercussions of bearing false witness.

I have no personal knowledge of the answer, but this is straight off a google search: The NGS preferred spelling and the official Ukrainian spelling is Chornobyl, although the Russian spelling, Chernobyl, may be used as a historical name or when referring to the nuclear power accident in 1986.

cappy wrote on Feb 16, 2023, 19:07:

selection7 wrote on Feb 15, 2023, 22:12:
That second link is interesting, but after reading paragraph after paragraph, I still couldn't find the part where they explain how the "vehicle indefinitely" could be corrupt or actually end up back in the hands of those donating. Did I miss it? I see many, many paragraphs complaining that the money is tied up not actually doing good in the present, though.

Furthermore, the bit about the Heard-Depp trial seems to present evidence against the article's own position. I watched many, if not the majority of that trial's testimonies:

#1) The article very incorrectly states that Elon gave $5MM in Heard's name (in addition to $0.5MM). My mental alarm went off went I read that, because it's not remotely true (and is easily googlable). Only $0.5MM was given by Musk in Heard's name, and probably another $350k anonymously (the ACLU says they literally don't know the source). The difference between $750k and $5MM is a pretty egregious factual error to get wrong in an article that's trying to persuade us they know the facts better than us.

[Note that Heard, herself, gave away no more than 5% of her divorce settlement, keeping the rest for herself, even though she said publicly she'd give it all away. Johnny actually started the process of giving that divorce settlement money directly to the ACLU himself, but Heard's reps reprimanded Depp and said he should pay the money to Heard first—supposedly so Heard rather than Johnny would get the tax write-off, but of course there never was a tax write off because Heard never gave it away, which an ACLU lawyer sheepishly testified to in court. Also interesting is the article saying Depp's legal team "tried to undermine Heard's credibility", even though Heard steadfastly refused to admit on the stand that she never gave that money away, even years after she'd received the settlement and before Depp sued her for defamation in 2019. If you watched the trial, you'd know there was no "tried" to it—it was one of many things that led the jury to believe Heard's credibility was undermined (i.e., that she was a serial liar).]

#2) In the courtroom, neither the ACLU lawyer, nor any legal pundits on either side ever suggested the $500–750k Musk gave to the ACLU (through the investor donated fund) didn't actually go to the ACLU. We might debate whether the ACLU should be considered a non-profit charity, but we can't debate that it nevertheless is, and that Musk gave $500–750k to the ACLU through that fund.

Sorry for the late response. A great many billionaires take advantage of "charity" vehicles primarily as a means of tax write-off while controlling and preserving the funds. A widely-used vehicle is a "donor advised fund".

Generally with DAFs, there are no minimum distribution requirements. Many of them may also be structured in a way (such as an LLC rather than as a charitable foundation) to avoid reporting their actual activities. They have become very popular especially among wealthy individuals in the tech industry.

This article discusses some of the issues with DAFs not making disbursements.

John Arnold talks about his issues with DAFs here

No problem. I forgot about this post too until today.
But, the new links notwithstanding, the stuff you told me is more of just what the other article said. So what? that the billionaire gets to control where the money in the fund ends up. That's the way charity works. So what? that it just sits in a pile not immediately being used. It can't stay there forever, and we've seen in the Depp-Heard case an example of that fund being actively used. What I want to know is how the "scam" is literally corrupt, for example, basically ending up being spent for things that are not charity, especially if it ends up only benefiting the billionaire. I'll check out the links later, but I already read one way too long article that never answered that most basic question the reader should be wanting to know.

That second link is interesting, but after reading paragraph after paragraph, I still couldn't find the part where they explain how the "vehicle indefinitely" could be corrupt or actually end up back in the hands of those donating. Did I miss it? I see many, many paragraphs complaining that the money is tied up not actually doing good in the present, though.

Furthermore, the bit about the Heard-Depp trial seems to present evidence against the article's own position. I watched many, if not the majority of that trial's testimonies:

#1) The article very incorrectly states that Elon gave $5MM in Heard's name (in addition to $0.5MM). My mental alarm went off went I read that, because it's not remotely true (and is easily googlable). Only $0.5MM was given by Musk in Heard's name, and probably another $350k anonymously (the ACLU says they literally don't know the source). The difference between $750k and $5MM is a pretty egregious factual error to get wrong in an article that's trying to persuade us they know the facts better than us.

[Note that Heard, herself, gave away no more than 5% of her divorce settlement, keeping the rest for herself, even though she said publicly she'd give it all away. Johnny actually started the process of giving that divorce settlement money directly to the ACLU himself, but Heard's reps reprimanded Depp and said he should pay the money to Heard first—supposedly so Heard rather than Johnny would get the tax write-off, but of course there never was a tax write off because Heard never gave it away, which an ACLU lawyer sheepishly testified to in court. Also interesting is the article saying Depp's legal team "tried to undermine Heard's credibility", even though Heard steadfastly refused to admit on the stand that she never gave that money away, even years after she'd received the settlement and before Depp sued her for defamation in 2019. If you watched the trial, you'd know there was no "tried" to it—it was one of many things that led the jury to believe Heard's credibility was undermined (i.e., that she was a serial liar).]

#2) In the courtroom, neither the ACLU lawyer, nor any legal pundits on either side ever suggested the $500–750k Musk gave to the ACLU (through the investor donated fund) didn't actually go to the ACLU. We might debate whether the ACLU should be considered a non-profit charity, but we can't debate that it nevertheless is, and that Musk gave $500–750k to the ACLU through that fund.

wrt Elon related comments, I added it up for everyone:
Elon's a jerk for helping Ukraine: 1,4,11,12,14,16(?),17,19
Defending Elon for helping for Ukraine: 20,25(?)
Tangent: 22,23

Now, consider...if it was your life's mission to stop Elon from providing a wartime crucial service to Ukraine, what would would be the best round about way to put a stop to it? If a sea of negativity floods in when he announces he'll keep providing the service, what effect could that have on a guy for whom feeling appreciated could be important? And then what part do we play in this?

Just a public service announcement that is bigger than this particular topic. We all need to be asking ourselves questions like this about the media we consume, because otherwise we become passive consumers susceptible to propaganda. There's a lot of bad people counting on us to do the latter.

https://techcrunch.com
/2022/10/15/starlink-isnt-a-charity-but-the-ukraine-war-isnt-a-business-opportunity

Yeah, PC gaming may have outsold all the consoles combined every year for the last 10 years, but not in sports games.

jdreyer wrote on Feb 8, 2022, 19:43:
Tried it when it first came out, decided it was half baked, and never tried it again. I think they did continue to improve it for several years though. Did it ever get good?

I don't play games that don't have an ending anymore, and in making that transition, only a few years after its release, I stopped playing this. I thought it was excellent. I didn't like having nothing to do for 10 minutes sometimes when I died early, though. It wasn't the dyeing I minded, but the sitting around doing nothing. Before Americas Army, I played the heck out of Counterstrike. Big difference between the two, and I preferred a less run-and-gun, more tactically cooperative style of play.

Mr. Tact wrote on Jan 30, 2022, 14:38:

selection7 wrote on Jan 30, 2022, 13:57:
Don't misunderstand me. I'm not looking to debate the merits of NFTs. You don't even have to tell me why you don't think the NFTs are what Ubisoft says they are. I'm just looking for those who are complaining about it to plainly state exactly what their problem is with it. I don't think they realize it's not clear at all.

First of all, I realize I can't keep idiots from wasting their money. Anyone who would buy Ubisoft NFTs is likely to find something just as stupid to spend their money on if Ubisoft does a 180 and never creates NFTs. Second, at some level, NFTs in games certainly aren't much worse than selling cosmetics for your character. And I don't have any particular issue with game cosmetics, I'll even confess to having bought some (ship paint jobs in E:D).

So, what's the problem? The problem is the representation this could be some kind of way for the gamers to make money. I feel this is disingenuous, at best. At worst it is a borderline criminal scam on their customers. It is nothing more than an attempt to con their customers. I object to people being conned.

Thanks, got it. It's true the only people I've heard talking about personally buying NFTs (some sports radio hosts in their 20s) were doing so speculatively, i.e., to make money. So I was aware of that angle, but NFTs are typically presented as something frivolous but apparently still 'cool' to the right kind of buyer (like Steam digital trading cards/badges). So I was confused why anyone would be up in arms about it. Going forward, I'll keep the speculative nature of NFTs more in mind when I'm reading about the subject.

Mr. Tact wrote on Jan 29, 2022, 17:31:
While it might be true that, "A fool and his money are soon parted" -- that doesn't mean we should be on board for systematic ways of doing it. Are you good with the clown who sells "Miracle Water"?

So that's a "yes" to my question if the outrage is entirely based on protecting those who are foolish or uninformed? Because you also imply the NFTs are "Miracle Water" that are not what they're purported to be. As you read in my original post, I can't see that Ubisofts NFTs aren't exactly what they say they are, so I also need you to confirm that's another complaint. Don't just imply it.
To summarize, confirm that the source of the anti-NFT crowd's complaint is only a) altruistically looking out for the foolish/uninformed, and b) misleading about what they are selling. If there is a c), then say that too.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not looking to debate the merits of NFTs. You don't even have to tell me why you don't think the NFTs are what Ubisoft says they are. I'm just looking for those who are complaining about it to plainly state exactly what their problem is with it. I don't think they realize it's not clear at all.