AsTheDominoesFall
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User ID: 2235
AsTheDominoesFall
7mo ago
Snapping turtle tastes excellent. If they tasted anything like that I'm not surprised they were eaten.
AsTheDominoesFall
8mo ago
They tend to have softer tannins than most other reds. The Garnacha/Grenache grape in particular is on the lower end of tannins so that would be the place to start.
AsTheDominoesFall
8mo ago
Have you tried Rioja? I've met several people who dislike most other reds they've tried but enjoy some Riojas. They're different from the French or Italian grapes that are usually grown in California but you can get it pretty cheaply. The Campo Viejo brand is pretty consistent and good for the mid-low price range.
AsTheDominoesFall
8mo ago
Say a man runs through someone else's house with a bulldozer. Everything in it is crushed, the walls collapse, the whole thing is completely destroyed. When people find out, they start calling the man an arsonist, who committed 'cold arson.' After all, destroying someone's home is a terrible thing to do. Does that make it arson?
AsTheDominoesFall
8mo ago
Most current fiction seems like it's written to be adapted as a movie/tv show - 80% dialogue and 20% spectacle. Some first-person stuff still has significant sections of internal monologue but even that is getting less common in my experience.
The RTS Star Wars: Empire at War has a pretty big modding community even though the vanilla game isn't that polished or popular. The Expanded and Remake mod projects are both significantly better than the base game in different ways, but I have a soft spot for the 2017 release of Republic at War. I find it interesting because of some factors that are pretty easy to call 'flaws' combine to make an unusual experience.
Empire at War is similar to the Total War games in basic structure. Importantly, however, the strategic map is real-time rather than turn-based. The control scheme is clunky - ships have to be transferred between fleets one at a time, and the click-and-drag to order a fleet to move to another planet can be awkward to perform. If a battle starts while you're issuing orders they're interrupted. In the original game this doesn't matter too much for a number of reasons. The maps are pretty small, 33 planets at most. Fleets usually only consist of a dozen or so ships. And the AI is not particularly aggressive. In Republic at War this is very different. The full map has 72 planets and they're spread further apart than the ones in the base game. You start with over 100 ships. And the enemy will attack you every few seconds at times, fueled by massive economic advantages that let them replace ships as fast as you destroy them.
Furthermore, the ships are pretty poorly balanced against each other. The CIS battleships get more bang for their buck than all the Republic ships with the exception of Venator Star Destroyers. These, however, are by far the best in the game, capable of shredding four or five times their cost in enemies when used well. Unfortunately, besides the three you start with, you can't build more until the fourth tech level out of five. Getting there takes about 30 minutes on the strategic map, but that time you'll probably be attacked over a hundred times at least.
It creates an extraordinarily tense and frantic experience that I haven't found in any other strategy game. You are beset by swarms of enemies on all sides, struggling to match them with inferior ships and inferior numbers. The trio of Venators can hold territory, but they can't be everywhere and if one is destroyed it can't be replaced for a long time. There's a big red timer counting down to the next tech level, but every second feels long when a new attack might come at any point. If you manage to hold on long enough, though, it all changes. Suddenly you have fleets that can outmatch the enemy, retake everything you lost and go on the offensive for the first time. It's a great feeling, and it really only works because of what seem like mistakes in game design.
AsTheDominoesFall
10mo ago
If you haven't played Trepang2 it's probably worth trying. It's not as good as F.E.A.R. 1, but it's the closest thing I've seen. I will have to say that the moment-to-moment gunplay is pretty much the only thing going for it. The story is extremely predictable - I guessed the shape of the 'twist ending' in the first mission. It's even worse as a horror game than F.E.A.R is and lacks a cohesive atmosphere. But if you like slowing down time and shredding bad guys with a shotgun it is a fun game.
@cjet79 I doubt this is the game for you. It's got boomer-shooter fast movement though I think the feel of the guns is better. There are also some bullet-sponge type enemies that show up in different numbers based on the difficulty. There's a free demo though so it might be something to look into.
AsTheDominoesFall
10mo ago
Depending on what you're frying you can put the oil through coffee filters and reuse it a couple times.
It's a reference to the book Leviathan by philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes claimed that people are inherently selfish and capable of violence. The natural state of man is a "war of all against all," or an anarchic realm of banditry and feuds. Enlightened self-interest leads to the formation of governments, but when those governments act in ways that make people think they would be better of with anarchy, it weakens the power of the state and encourages civil war and criminality.
Hlynka believes (as I understand it) that this is more or less the most important text of political philosophy in Western civilization and that it is underappreciated in the modern world. This is the best source I can find of him explaining his views on the matter.
I have, and I continue to maintain that "the Left" and "the Right" are best understood as a religious schism within the Enlightenment with disciples of Rousseau on one side and the disciples of Hobbes on the other. Both accepted Locke's theory of the social contract (or at least the broad strokes thereof) but each had vastly different ideas about the relationship of the individual to said contract. The American Revolution skewed one way, the French the other.
@HlynkaCG if I've misrepresented your opinions.
AsTheDominoesFall
1yr ago
AsTheDominoesFall
1yr ago
Say you're a Swede who lives in San Diego and wants to visit family in Seattle. Everyone on the west coast who doesn't live in those two cities decided to freely disassociate from Swedes. Now you can't stop for lodging or victuals along the route.
Is this realistic in the modern age of capitalism? No. But some people think that things like it might be. Stepping away from the specifics of race, I suspect that many small businesses would freely disassociate from wheelchair-bound people if it was legal to do so.
AsTheDominoesFall
1yr ago
Reminds me of the Battle of Athens, America's own Scouring of the Shire.
AsTheDominoesFall
1yr ago
AsTheDominoesFall
1yr ago
Somehow I recall Scott coming down much harder on Adam's side, which is strange.
That probably comes from this comment:
Yeah, my particular reason for giving [the marriage contract] low weight is that I don’t think people mean it. It’s like banning people from leaving America because they pledged allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands in fourth grade. Or banning doctors from doing surgery because they swore the Hippocratic Oath which includes a part about leaving that to barbers.
Some rituals take the form of binding contracts, but the parties to the ritual don’t necessarily intend or even think about the contract terms. If the two parties explicitly did something like a covenant marriage, or said in their vows “By the way, we really personally mean the stuff about being monogamous, we’re not just saying that because we’re supposed to,” I would have a lot less sympathy for Adam.
AsTheDominoesFall
1yr ago
Test me.
Endless Sky is a free (actually free, no microtransactions) and modernized Escape Velocity clone. There are several others but that's the most polished and complete of them.
AsTheDominoesFall
1yr ago
AsTheDominoesFall
1yr ago
I'm liking blue jays because they chase the grackles away from my feeders so all the other birds will show up.
AsTheDominoesFall
1yr ago
A theory that is unfalsifiable is like a compass that always points north no matter what direction it’s facing; it’s useless precisely because it’s “true” no matter what.
That's what a compass is supposed to do.
AsTheDominoesFall
1yr ago
Space missions were always opposed by part of the left and supported by part of the right, see Ayn Rand on Apollo 11:
In The New York Times of July 21, 1969, there appeared two whole pages devoted to an assortment of reactions to the lunar landing, from all kinds of prominent and semi-prominent people who represent a cross-section of our culture.
It was astonishing to see how many ways people could find to utter variants of the same bromides. Under an overwhelming air of staleness, of pettiness, of musty meanness, the collection revealed the naked essence (and spiritual consequences) of the basic premises ruling today’s culture: irrationalism — altruism — collectivism.
The extent of the hatred for reason was somewhat startling. (And, psychologically, it gave the show away: one does not hate that which one honestly regards as ineffectual.) It was, however, expressed indirectly, in the form of denunciations of technology. (And since technology is the means of bringing the benefits of science to man’s life, judge for yourself the motive and the sincerity of the protestations of concern with human suffering.)
“But the chief reason for assessing the significance of the moon landing negatively, even while the paeans of triumph are sung, is that this tremendous technical achievement represents a defective sense of human values, and of a sense of priorities of our technical culture.” “We are betraying our moral weakness in our very triumphs in technology and economics.” “How can this nation swell and stagger with technological pride when it is so weak, so wicked, so blinded and misdirected in its priorities? While we can send men to the moon or deadly missiles to Moscow or toward Mao, we can’t get foodstuffs across town to starving folks in the teeming ghettos.” “Are things more important than people? I simply do not believe that a program comparable to the moon landing cannot be projected around poverty, the war, crime, and so on.” “If we show the same determination and willingness to commit our resources, we can master the problems of our cities just as we have mastered the challenge of space.” “In this regard, the contemporary triumphs of man’s mind — his ability to translate his dreams of grandeur into awesome accomplishments — are not to be equated with progress, as defined in terms of man’s primary concern with the welfare of the masses of fellow human beings . . . the power of human intelligence which was mobilized to accomplish this feat can also be mobilized to address itself to the ultimate acts of human compassion.” “But, the most wondrous event would be if man could relinquish all the stains and defilements of the untamed mind . . .”
AsTheDominoesFall
1yr ago
My bourbon of choice recently has been Old Forester, the basic 86 proof usually and the 1897 when I want something more complex.
I like Ardbeg 10 for Scotch when I drink it. It has a good smokiness but a much cleaner flavor than the other heavily peated single malts I've tried.
The trick I was missing for gumbo is to use all three traditional thickeners - dark roux. file powder, and okra. When I only used one or two I'd always be disappointed.
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