pigeonburger
19hr ago
My brother, there are youtube channels that do this now. Some are just raw footage, some are trashy and will have really unpleasant stuff like seeing a recently deceased's family being informed of the death of their loved ones. My favorite is Midwest Safety; straddles the line nicely between putting enough contextual information and keeping things relatively classy for the genre.
There's something darkly funny about the prospect of the profit motive of the cynical businessman being far more valuable than the truth motive of a good-faith academic for producing actual knowledge or useful research.
This is ultimately the lesson that needs to be properly taught as to why capitalism outperforms the alternatives. The profit motive, or greed if you prefer to phrase it in a negative way, is not in and of itself good for society, but it is reliable. Which is why it is a good platform to build upon, to align incentives with goals that are prosocial. Fear is the closest alternative, which is why regimes that reject capitalism will tend to reach for fear as their source of motivation for prosocial actions. It's not perfect though, and its inferior to greed; when abused the stick loses its sting. But "truth" is so far off that it's hilarious to think anyone serious would think it could do the job, especially when profit, power and influence are on the table for the taking if you were just bend your principles. And you won't even notice you are bending them, your brain will make it very easy to believe that "truth" aligned with whatever your employer wants to hear, whatever your political tribe wants to hear, whatever your peers want to hear.
pigeonburger
1d ago
There's other ways in which sports can suck though.
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Players do things that barely relate to one another. This is the reason Quiddich in Harry Potter is a stupid idea from someone who probably doesn't understand sports as a concept. But baseball also does it; the pitcher, the batter, the basemen, the fielders do things that outside of the direct level of ball itself, barely have anything to do with one another. Sure, the pitcher is is in direct opposition to the batter, but how does the pitcher affect the fielders?
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The sport is so optimized that large parts of the intended spectacle have become irrelevant. I don't know much about basketball but from what I hear people saying, that's its state now.
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Having so many players that are focussed on only one physical aspect because that's the only thing that's asked of them. Baseball and american football do that. In american football, you got your QB that's usually fairly well rounded, then you get a mix of big mofos and sprightly gazelles. In baseball it seems at this point all that people care about is pitchers (and star batters; I know, they play a position on defense, but that's just to keep them busy).
pigeonburger
1d ago
So no Leatherman? The "standard" one has a blade a bit under 3 inches.
pigeonburger
1d ago
At the limit where the city will go bankrupt from it sure, but below that level you're unlikely to convince the city not to put cameras to protect from crime by going on a property crime spree. Your actions will likely justify putting more cameras to try and catch you vandalizing the cameras.
pigeonburger
1d ago
While not exactly a bayonet, a typical multitool could easily be used to stab someone to death. And to me and most people I know the blade on a multitool is easily the most useful tool on it, by a lot. So your being ok with someone having a knife is dependant on them also having less useful tools stuck on it?
pigeonburger
1d ago
I mean, he's not wrong on soccer's inferiority...
But the real best sport that cannot become a real world cup sports because it's too advanced is hockey, and even then, there's 3 countries that can field an all-star team, and a few more that can field at least an NHL-level team, if not an all-star one.
pigeonburger
1d ago
fire
Does your widdle tummy goes ouchy and achy from eating a bit of raw meat?
pigeonburger
6d ago
Oh, I was simply concurring about the difficulty of having a doctor take you seriously, not asking you to answer for it!
I imagine the best solution is to have a family doctor who knows you and knows that you wouldn't bother him if the symptoms weren't well listed before you opened the damned medical encyclopedia, and that you understand and care about the statistical probability of zebras but sadly it seems this is a system we cannot afford here, so random dismissive generalist it is.
pigeonburger
6d ago
it's the strongest ammunition there is when it comes to making other doctors take you seriously and in convincing them to do the right thing
Maybe it's different for people who can build a relationship with a specific doctor that follows them, but here where you get whoever you're lucky enough to see, the second a non-doctor suggests they have a suspicion as to what they actually have, the doctors will update heavily against the probability of it being that and will do everything they can to dismiss it being what was suggested, as if their now tainted diagnosis should be your punishment for daring to think about anything medical as a stupid plebian. I mean, I know a lot of people otherwise would waste ressources because of Cyberchondria, but not everyone outside of the medical profession is a drooling moron either. And not everyone inside of it hasn't devolved over time into one since medical school.
pigeonburger
7d ago
We were more religious than most of the northern US and western europe. Something like southern europe would be a good analogy, until the 60s, where we caught up all in one shot. Having as many children as possible was heavily encouraged by the church, and was even regularly discussed as an act of resistance against the anglos, it was called "la guerre des berceaux" or "the crib war". And ultimately, it is probably why we managed to avoid what we refer to as "louisianisation".
pigeonburger
7d ago
In the most recent Olympics the single token minority on the team was a guy who is quarter-Japanese (I think?).
Nick Suzuki? Yeah he's quarter japanese, though as a Habs fan no one here ever thinks of him as a minority.
pigeonburger
8d ago
I mean, if he's capable of jumping right to it sure, but the ulterior motives means that there are stakes at play, which adds stress and nervousness which lower his confidence. At least that's how it was for me back then. Removing the motives, not even letting himself think about anything further than the current conversation makes it easier to talk confidently. Once's he's established he's as capable of confidently holding conversations with pretty girls without getting flustered or intimidated, then he can start thinking about flirting with them.
pigeonburger
8d ago
I doubt the goal is to actually collect that revenue, but these two objectives:
- Shame the countries (European, mostly) that refused to join into committing some ships,
- Dispell the idea that Iran is controlling the Strait since they demand tolls or collaboration; if the US is able to demand tolls instead then the US is demonstrating it is in control. Who this demonstration is for, Iran, American voters, etc... I'm not sure.
pigeonburger
11d ago
College will help, but you need to practice interacting casually with girls you could find attractive with no ulterior motives.
pigeonburger
11d ago
You're very tall but not deformed tall, it's gonna be fine.
Bartenders too can clear large amounts of money in tips in hip, expensive nightclubs. Tips for service as a percentage is rather non-sensical.
I'm sure some snobs would argue that the service in a Michelin starred restaurant is worth paying 10 times than that in a local diner, but as a thought experiment what would happen if you were to exchange the wait staff in both but keep the same food? You'd probably have a massively more popular "Michelin starred restaurant with diner staff" (probably barely less popular than it was with its original staff) than "local diner with Michelin starred wait staff", which tells me that the service is a lot less consequential than the food.
Far Cry (1 is more analogous to HL, and from 2 onwards they go more open world, but they still sometimes funnel you through to segments that are more like Half-Life), the Crysis series, Singularity, Call of Duty 2 to... I don't remember which, FEAR, Wolfenstein 2009 and New Order...
I'm not saying these are better games in their context than HL1 and HL2, and they all owe a lot to what HL1 and HL2 did, but if all these games, and HL1 and HL2, released for the first time today, HL1 and HL2 would be to me at least some of the least interesting and impressive of that bunch. I feel like arena shooters and "boomer shooters" aged better because their appeal is more tied to addictive game mechanics and high skill ceilings than "being impressed by seeing what would have usually been a video cutscene done in-engine, in first person while being able to move for the first time" or "being impressed by seeing a physics puzzle for the first time in an FPS".
pigeonburger
11d ago
The simplicity is part of the design.
I would argue that at the time, it was not designed to be simple. It seems simple in retrospect and whether you find that endearing is up to you. I do like simple games too. But I'm not convinced I would be impressed if I were in a mirror universe where it had never existed yet everything else about the industry was somehow the same, and someone released Half-Life 1 today as an indie game.
And your answer to my other question is basically that there has not been anything great in the last 10 years.
I know, but in between Half-Life 2 and Titanfall 2, pretty much all major first person shooters did what Half-Life (1 and 2) did as a matter of routine, and often better than it did. All the Call of Duty games pretty much have it beat in the "run a mostly set route between spectacular set-pieces". Titanfall 2, to me, set a new bar that's high enough above everything else before that it hasn't been cleared in 10 years, but after Half-Life 2 and until Titanfall 2, I thought the bar was being regularly cleared. It helped that it was an era of first person shooters proeminence and now isn't (at least, not single player FPS).
pigeonburger
11d ago
I recall the excellent Westworld, Season 1 (and deny that anything else came after that) that the dividing line of sentience is a mostly illusory one: that it is a emergent property of the self-concept, of the internal monologue. That notions of a soul may either be chauvinist hubris: or perhaps God will endow them with one, as Providence dictates.
Ultimately that's really the point of Turing's Imitation Game. It was not to be a real serious test to use as a measure. It illustrates that we are not even able to discern sentience in other humans, we just assume it, and that if we afford the same leeway to machines, we will eventually end up with machines that have just as good a claim to it as other humans do to us. And as early as ELIZA, once it was clear machines could manage grammar and human language, it was obvious that eventually, without even needing a real paradigm change, we'd end up with machines that would be capable of fooling us.
I mean that if I were fully unaware of any video games, and you put in front of me Half-Life 1 and almost any major developer's first person shooters since, I don't know, Far Cry 1? it would feel boring and simple. Don't get me wrong, I respect the hell out of Half-Life 1 and 2, because they were pushing the envelope at the time they came out, but those things they did that were groundbreaking are old-hat now, and when it comes to pure shooting mechanics of it, I feel like some older games aged better too (the Doom and Quake series, for instance).
As for better newer shooters, sadly single-player shooters are a stale genre nowadays, with pretty much nothing but Call of Duties. But some years back (oh god, ten years ago! I'm old!) my mind was was completely blown by the campaign on Titanfall 2; if you haven't played that I highly recommend it. It doesn't even lean on open world to differenciate itself, it does the same linear, spectacle as Half-Life does but it does it with everything pushed to the next level. Like Half-Life 2 did, there's so much creativity and skill at work here that they could create and discard gimmicks for single levels that lesser devs would make the entire game revolve around. If anything was able to push the envelope from that point after, I was not made aware of it.
pigeonburger
12d ago
Haven't had much time for gaming, but I picked up on Steam sale Tactics Ogre Reborn, HOMM Olden Era and RACCOIN (think Balatro but coin pusher instead of poker).
pigeonburger
12d ago
I'm surprised, since I would have held HL1 and HL2 as examples of a shooters that pushed the envelope at the time but aren't necessarily mechanically better than newer shooters. But if as you say she's not a big singleplayer FPS person, maybe it's a better intro to it than most since it's not expecting years of built up experience on other shooters.
pigeonburger
12d ago
"The punishment should fit the offender, and not merely the crime,"
We can't sentence judges the same way we sentence the plebs, says judge. Very cool. Feels very fair, this instills so much faith in me that "all are equal before the law".
I think for a lot of people, the thinking is that if they let the arrest happen quickly and without drama, they are accepting an L, but if they drag it on and make it as hard as possible, maybe something, anything will happen that can turn this into a W; they think maybe if they make it as excrutiating as possible the cops will in frustration do something they can spin into brutality or racism and they can use that as leverage. Usually in the end the leverage ends up going the other way, as in the description of the sentencing in the videos you often hear they end up pleading guilty at the initial charges to have the kicking and spitting and biting at the cops charges go away. You end up wondering how lenient the sentences could have been if they had just gone quietly.
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