Question the liberal echo chamber and it's off to Big Brother's re-education camps for you!

Riot Games is not exactly what I would call a liberal echo chamber, they've been known for some pretty shitty behavior over the past 5 years. Also when you're commenting publicly with your real name it reflects on your associations and it's no shocker that corporations don't like bad PR and I'm sure he has a morals clause in his contract.

Cutter wrote on Jun 12, 2020, 11:05:
Racists.

I mean first off this is a really low/no content reply. Second what exactly is your beef with them establishing a fund to help more black developers publish a game? It's a pretty under-represented demographic, something like less than 3% of the development side of the industry. The common refrain I see online from people "fine, but what about <X>?" and no one is saying those minorities shouldn't be getting some support either. White people and asians kind of have the lions share of development money in the industry already for example.

I just don't see how you reconcile the opinion that supporting a minority is somehow a racist act.

Yeah it's tough to balance, I get that. I'm very proud of how we support social causes in our family and I believe we can solve these issues without violence. I think that violent protests will play right into the hands of people like Trump and used as an excuse to extinguish lawful protest, a tactic they've tried already. When I look at what's been successful and what has swayed me on these issues it has nothing to do with riots. I'm also realistic enough to understand an underlying systemic issue like this doesn't have a 140 character ending but is an ongoing series of complex problems that need solutions from every level of government.

But thankfully as jdreyer has pointed out most of the protests have been peaceful and garnered widespread support and especially among white people. And he's right that I need to remember that the outliers are the exception, not the rule. And I do firmly believe that this moment is different. What's desperately needed now is policy support and it remains to be seen if a morally bankrupt administration can provide it. Come November there will be a reckoning if they don't.

Violent protests or riots, and peaceful protests turned violent by a militarized police force are one of the only things that have brought forth change in this country.

That's patently untrue - The Civil Rights movement was mostly non-violent, women's suffrage, gay rights, the Rosa Parks boycott and the list goes on. You really have to ignore history to think that violent protest is the only way to effect change, its a dangerous attitude and totally at odds with the quote you posted earlier.

Anyways be the change you want. Talk is cheap, get out there and do something.

It is really odd to advocate violent protest as you did below then quote MLK Jr. MLK advocated non-violent protest, compassion and understanding even of his enemies. That's part of what made him so inspirational.

“With patient and firm determination we will press on until every valley of despair is exalted to new peaks of hope, until every mountain of pride and irrationality is made low by the levelling process of humility and compassion; until the rough places of injustice are transformed into a smooth plane of equality of opportunity; and until the crooked places of prejudice are transformed by the straightening process of bright-eyed wisdom.”

“We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.”

Regardless I agree that now is the time for solutions and I think that public opinion and the political will are there to effect real change. Our family donates time to political efforts and significant portions of income to several causes. I hope others are doing the same.

Orogogus wrote on Jun 11, 2020, 21:54:
Because it seems to me that a protest movement with zero chance of bodily harm or property damage completely failed to elicit approval or sympathy across party lines, and in fact got the other side to, at best, dismiss it as political theater, and at worst, completely lose their minds about disrespecting the anthem, flag and military. That was the peaceful protest, and as far I can tell it did nothing.

I guess I don't agree, if nothing else it helped build support for the BLM movement. Public opinion in the US takes a long time to shift. It was a pretty fucked up year and the issue was muddied due to interference from people using it to their political advantage unfortunately.

For the anti-BLM mentality, the acceptable level of protest seems to be something utterly harmless that can be turned off or never looked at, and ideally which doesn't make anyone feel bad. And in that light, it's apparent why riots, or the threat of riots, would be a much more effective tool to force change than, say, an extremely mildly worded change.org petition that apportions blame for police brutality between the perpetrators and the victims. "End racist police brutality, or else we'll enact the utterly harmless kind of protest that you like so much" presents obvious downsides.

Look at how public opinion has shifted on the issue since Floyd's death. People are not changing their mind because of the potential threat of violence from a mob, they are outraged at the manner of his death and the response afterward. Sometimes it takes a trigger issue or event and this has been a long time building since the Zimmerman trial. But the answer to violence is rarely more violence. That tends to escalate in really ugly ways and can often negatively impact public opinion. The peaceful protests and media attention have been very successful, now people need to follow it through in holding politicians accountable for real change.

Orogogus wrote on Jun 11, 2020, 19:33:
I feel like you were one of the people disgusted with the taking a knee protest, and said you stopped watching football because of it.

No, I was disgusted with the whole sport and many things surrounding it that year. The Hernandez CTE thing was just breaking, the Kaepernick protest became political theater between the left and the right, the NFLs response was dogshit and Donald Trump used the whole thing to galvanize his base and wage a pointless twitter battle. I keep up on many social and political issues already and sports is my escape so I got fed up when it was apparent that it was going nowhere productive and stopped watching games for a few weeks. My position as always is that I support peoples right to protest even though I don't personally support every single cause or issue. I don't really see how that's connected to this discussion either.

NKD wrote on Jun 11, 2020, 15:19:

Verno wrote on Jun 11, 2020, 10:01:
I support peaceful protesters who want real change.

Honest question: What should people do when peaceful protest doesn't work, or worse, isn't even allowed because the police immediately tear gas everyone?

Peaceful protests have a pretty good track record in this country and they tend to foster widespread public support, often across party lines even so I'm pretty confident they have worked and will continue working. I don't think its feasible for the police to immediately suppress every single protest nor do I think they will try, that's painting with a pretty wide brush. Regardless I don't think the answer is for people to loot a Target, destroy local shops or burn some stuff on 5th Ave. That's not violent protest, that's just mindless anarchy and looting. If we don't have law and order then we don't have anything. The answer is in political reform and police oversight. Other countries have well established civilian oversight bodies even at the municipal level and it's a good model to follow. And this whole situation could've been an opportunity for understanding, change and healing if we had a competent response at the federal level as well. People will have their chance to speak to that soon enough at the polls.

If we become a shithole country where people cannot peacefully protest at all then I'll answer your question more directly but we're not there yet and I hope we never are. I've travelled a fair bit and been to a few countries like that and they aren't places you want to live and raise a family.

Passing a fake $20 bill shouldn't result in you being tortured to death on film. People also shouldn't be looting and rioting in response. Two wrongs don't make a right. I support peaceful protesters who want real change. I do not support what was done in Minneapolis or in New York. I'm not sure disbanding police forces is the right response either but I understand the frustration. The solution to bad policing is better training with an emphasis on conflict de-escalation, higher pay and stricter requirements. I also think police should have "terms" like politicians to cycle them into and out of active duty because its a job that will burn out even the most well meaning person. Any death involving the police should have a third party investigation with at least one component from the civilian populace. That is the case in many countries already. Systemic racism will not be defeated by just reforming the police either, its a larger societal problem with many facets (education, gun control, economic opportunity, etc) and that is reflected in the stats of black on black violence.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jun 9, 2020, 12:14:
Mrs. Burrito uses hers as pockets but not for things dealing with the outside public. Usually it's her phone when working out in the garden so it is close to her hearing aids and so she can keep her hands free while working.

Also, Miss Tiny Titties has never had to deal with women's tops for large busted women who don't have an accompanying gunt. Pockets? Those are mythical things never seen before.Even if they do have pockets they are super tiny and won't hold a phone.

If it's not a day like today, where it is 4000 degrees hotter than the surface of the sun, Mrs. Burrito will often borrow my workshirts if available since they have decent breast pockets on both sides. Only because of the decent pockets.

The missus marvels at my pajamas and many of my tops just because they have pockets, apparently this is somewhat difficult to find for women. I don't know why women tolerate these things, just stop buying shit that isn't practical and manufacturers will eventually get the message. The pink tax at work again I guess.

Mr. Tact wrote on Jun 8, 2020, 12:22:
I have considered most of these "smart appliances" as profit traps all along. People paying a significant premium for a marginally useful (at best) interfaces. The lack of continuing support shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Someday the whole house will be "smart" you'll be able to be several rooms away and query the house computer how much OJ is left in the refrigerator, but not in our lifetimes...

Yeah I tend to agree when it comes to manufacturer stuff but I've had a good time just adding my own "smart" functionality to things. I added a module to control our coffee maker so it can be fully scheduled and controlled from HomeAssistant. Pointless but amusing. I added a time tracker for our laundry as its on a different floor, now you can get a notification when its done. I hooked our outdoor lights in the gazebo up to our network so I could automate the schedule based on the sun. I built a smart mirror last summer that's also a display and shows the weather and a few other things.

I tried thinking of some projects for the fridge but they all seem to be more work than they're worth. BBQs already have temperature tracking in some models but to me that ruins the fun of the grill so I'm never going to bother.

I would just slap DD-WRT or Tomato onto a compatible consumer router then. You can have the features you want and still have the compact box/etc.

So yeah this one is not looking good based on the previews. It looks like they outsourced much of the design even. Gameplay looks simplistic and even the design UI elements were clearly done by different teams with totally disparate unit cards vs interface UI. The unit balance and bizarre half step into mythology is embarrassing. It's clear that they are putting this out to die on the EGS and are just taking the fat sack of cash. I highly doubt my earlier assumption of more DLC too. Apparently DLC isn't selling very well on the EGS, several devs have reneged or are backing out after a few high profile projects basically spent their exclusivity paycheck on developing DLC and got burned. I would be surprised if they did anything else after the Amazon DLC for this and that was clearly lopped off to sell.

I really love Total War games but this is looking like a B effort at best. Real shame.

Mr. Tact wrote on Jun 5, 2020, 08:04:
*cough* $700 for a four port device/router? I'm sure it is capable of doing everything I would ever need. My pain threshold on the cost is a bit lower. Even if that is "MSRP" pricing and I could get it for a lot less, I'd like to see some evidence I have a chance of being knowledgeable enough to use it. My brain atrophy is increasing by the day..

You can just slap a NIC or two (if you lack an onboard Intel) into an old box and run pfsense on that. Plug all of your devices into a switch and plug the switch into your pfsense box (LAN). Plug your uplink in the other NIC (WAN). You can get a Ubiquiti AP if you need wireless, they're going to be far better than anything else at that price point. You don't need to buy pfsense branded hardware, pfsense runs on a toaster and is totally free. I have an old low power fileserver that runs pfsense for the house. You don't have to use the CLI either, it has a good web UI these days and the documentation is stellar.

If you don't feel comfortable with this stuff then fair enough. It is a good learning project and I find it fun. You will certainly appreciate the control and information about your home network. But hey nothing wrong with just getting a tp-link router and calling it a day either, some people don't care about these things and I get that.

I would use Origin but it seems to forget its login cookie every time I load it so meh. EA hasn't put out any decent games in quite awhile now either.

jdreyer wrote on Jun 3, 2020, 22:15:
*Sigh*

Prometheus was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Covenant was pretty bad too. Time for Scott to retire.

I'd love to see an Aliens movie directed by James Wan or Matt Reeves.

Yes, thank you. They were both pretentious, overwrought monstrosities with some pretty comical writing. It is sad to watch Scott's career continue to deteriorate. Just absolutely terrible from start to finish. Pretty visuals is about the highest compliment I can pay either movie.

Ash wrote on Jun 4, 2020, 12:14:
This game was actually really good, it was a hidden gem imo.
The combat was especially fluid and very fun. If they could combine the combat of this game and everything else from Skyrim, it would for sure be one of the best games ever made.

The trouble was that there was no real balancing done at all. You were completely overpowered in 5 hours and there was no semblance of challenge afterward. I enjoyed it as a fun little SP with MMO style quests, it reminds me a bit of a Western Xenoblade.

Icewind wrote on Jun 3, 2020, 12:06:
Spent 9 years on twitter before abandoning my account. One thing I can tell you with certainty is that there exists only two groups on twitter, and they are both sides of an extreme, and fight endlessly. Anyone daring to exist in the middle will get steamrolled in the process. After fighting tooth and nail in that war for 5 years just to continue making money at my writing job and keep it long enough to fulfill my dreams of writing for a living, I left and went back to the real world and a real job.

That place is a garbage dump and would be the very last website you'd ever see me load onto my browser again.

I don't use it much aside from shaming companies for warranty support when they ignore phone calls and email. It seems utterly useless to me. You can't have any serious discourse on it and it rarely represents real world interests. Too often I find its a bunch of people seeking confirmation bias and bashing others who don't share their views. Most of the time when you drill down to the actual users its a bunch of privileged people, many of whom are totally disconnected from the issues they're screaming about. And god help you if you point out any of the above or dare to speak with any nuance. It's a pick a side or else.

'Zuck is all about the buck.

Ozmodan wrote on Jun 2, 2020, 23:39:
My neighbor begs to differ with you, soon as his Tesla was off-lease he ditched it. Said he would not own another. He has a BMW electric which he says is 10 times the car the Tesla was. Personal opinion of course.

I'm not sure what exactly you're disagreeing with and it's difficult to respond to a third party who isn't here. I'm glad he found something he likes I guess? I had a BMW 328i (convertible!) long ago and found it to be a pretty fun car but the ongoing maintenance was very costly both in money and time.