WhiningCoil
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User ID: 269
WhiningCoil
1d ago
Sure seems too. I had a buddy who lived in a shitty townhome community in a bad part of town, and the HOA rode his ass about the color of his front door (which was picked directly from the HOA's list of approved colors), but didn't seem to care one wit about the broken down vehicles scattered about the guest parking spaces, the litter scattered about by scumbag kids, or any of the other daily inconveniences caused by living among low trust, high time preference demographics.
WhiningCoil
1d ago
I beat the Mechwarrior 5 Clans Ghost Bear DLC. It was short and sweat, with only 12 missions. I can't definitively say it was worth the $20 for everyone, but I'm happy with my purchase. I enjoyed the story, and the whole culture, of Clan Ghost Bear a lot more than the "We're gonna commit awesome war crimes but then try to make you feel bad about it" approach the Smoke Jaguar campaign took. Smoke Jaguar is synonymous with remorseless war crimes god damnit! If you have to lampshade what's coming to them, don't have a bunch of novice warriors questioning how genocide makes them feel bad. Have them mocking the doubters with "What is the inner sphere gonna do? A trial of annihilation?" And then have them belly laugh like you just suggested they start freebirthing too.
Anyways, that's the base game. The DLC was awesome, nothing annoyed me beyond the ubiquity of having all the authority figures be boss bitches. Because current year I guess. Like I know female khans, sakhans, star commanders etc were common in the clans. But their representation in MW5:Clans and it's expansion is like 70-80% of authority figures, and 90% of the "good" ones. Ah well.
WhiningCoil
4d ago
You know, that really strikes at the duality of it for me. I don't want to be fucking around with arduino components like electronic legos, but then the ecosystem of all electronic components is so vast and wide and deep that you really are just adrift.
My dream for a time was to build my own 8-bit computer with some cheap 6502, VGA output and synthesizer audio as a fun learning exercise. But it turns out nobody makes VGA chips anymore? Or audio? Basically everything is SOC, and every project you see along these lines has a legit 8-bit Z80 or 6502, and then uses an SOC as a co-processor for it's VGA and sound, or has you using 20-30 year old salvaged chips.
WhiningCoil
4d ago
You know, in my casual reading of history, legal reforms of this sort usually go down as "Best thing since sliced bread". They rarely stick, and a few generations later the law has recomplicated itself to a point where it's just a mechanism of abuse and corruption. But for 20-100 years upright industrious people can breath a sigh of relief, content that some petty tyrant can't conjure up some obscure bureaucratic incantation to seize all their wealth and throw them in a rape cage.
WhiningCoil
4d ago
Does my experience here sound right so far? Small electronics success often hinges on shopping skill?
You know, once upon a time I wanted to do more electronics stuff. But this is more or less the brick wall I ran up again. Sourcing parts is bonkers complicated, and simply was not a part of the hobby I was going to enjoy. I repaired a few old motherboards, and developed enough soldering skill to repair the odd toaster, mouse or audio speaker, and more or less decided to leave it there. Although I'm always have my eye out for an inspiring woodworking/electronics project.
WhiningCoil
4d ago
So, the last three weeks having been a battle against the loss of morale realizing you did things kinda wrong and there is no going back. But I'll get to that.
I milled the rest of the lumber for my back chair legs, and got them rough cut out, working around knots and weirdness as best I could. Some of the layouts didn't leave a lot of room. But for the most part I got 4 chair legs out of plank, in pairs of two. This took for fucking ever with the jigsaw, and my urge to buy a bandsaw has intensified. I saw Harbor Freight recently released one with an 8" resaw capacity that's only $600 which is very tempting. Maybe if I get a Christmas bonus. Anyways, it got done eventually.
Next comes attaching the template to each leg with some double sided tape. You do a pass on the router table with a templating bit, remove the template, and then hit it again to remove the rest of the rough edge. It takes a few passes. I even had to hit this with a flush trim bit from the top after I got as far up as I could with the template bit from the bottom. Cleaning them up with a sanding drum on my drill press and they aren't looking too bad. At some point I realized, after enough really ugly tear out, that I needed to reverse my feed direction. Normally I hate this, because instead of the bit pulling the work piece in closer against a fense or other positive stop, it wants to climb the workpiece and spit it out. But I had to trade that safety for not consistently destroying my workpieces with massive tear out. The curve of the legs just offer too much chance for the bit to catch an odd grain and rip a huge chunk off. A few weren't so bad and sanded out, but one piece that tore away was so large I was able to glue it back into place and resume my work.
But I said I messed up, and here is what happened. I should have used MDF for my template instead of a piece of 1/2" sheathing. I figured sheet goods are sheet goods and it's what I had. But it turns out, sheet goods are not sheet goods. The sheathing had all sorts of warp too it, and flexed too much. Every leg I routed using it came out just a little bit different. This would not have happened with MDF which basically has no give at all because it's more glue than wood. Alas. Still, with 8 legs for 4 chairs, I was able to pair each leg off with it's closest match. So fingers crossed the final products don't drive me insane with their dissimilarity.
Next up came getting started on the jig for mortising the back legs. Fingers crossed it works out when I finally go to use it. It should handle the mortising for the back rest and the front to back apron pieces. I'll need to use a seperate jig for the side to side apron pieces and the brace down at the bottom which is going to be the most challenging mortise.
With the legs behind, I'm excited to plow on ahead towards dry fitting my first complete chair.
WhiningCoil
5d ago
They have state controlled media. They can always just lie. Also, they can just cheat on whatever deals they do make and brag about it. Maybe Trump won't even notice.
I donno man. Even before 2024 Trump, I've been seen weird "read between the lines" predictions that China's economy is secretly fucked. But I never know what to take seriously, because it's basically a choice between believing state run media, or cranks. One side says everything is amazing and they have 8% GDP growth, the other side says China is already in a recession.
Then again, they say the same thing about the US...
But I find it not impossible to believe that inside the black box that is the Chinese economy, the wheels already came off long ago and it's just barely holding together with chewing gum and rubber bands.
And the rubber bands were manufactured in China.
WhiningCoil
5d ago
Does anybody have any ideas on what I missed?
The tariff's hurt China too. For reasons I can only speculate, all I've ever heard about tariffs are that they are stupid when the US does it, and brilliant when other countries (especially China) do them to us to protect their industrial base. While there may be something to the specific circumstances that could support this narrative, it is rarely evident in the reporting. If you've ever been inoculated against Gell-Mann Amnesia, you'd detect a psyop going on here.
China has basically stopped even reporting financial figures, not even the fraudulent ones you need to read between the lines of. There is effectively no reliable information about how the tariff's are impacting China's economy. But rumors are coming out that it's manufacturing sector in panicking, with factories sitting idle and orders drying up. Even if reshoring is years away, companies literally cannot afford to order from China while the tariff's are in place. I was watching some of Gamer's Nexus's coverage of the tariffs, and companies were saying that with the tariff's they would lose $100+ selling a $100 PC case for example. So all they can do is shut down production and hope a solution presents itself. They haven't sold through their US stock (yet), but they sure as shit have cancelled their orders no matter what the penalty they have to pay.
WhiningCoil
7d ago
Yeah, they hired some community manager that basically turned CGL into an LGBTQ+ based company. It's... not good.
They fired one of their longest running and best IMHO authors because he was conservative. Then they stepped in and broke the "no real world politics" rules the assorted communities have and made celebrating pride month mandatory.
WhiningCoil
8d ago
So, I think so. I too played it on release, preordered it even for a sweet chest of MWO bonuses. I was profoundly underwhelmed, and I don't think I played more than 5 hours for all the reasons you mentioned. Radar was LOS only, enemies constantly spawned out of thin air right on top of you, frequently 100 ft behind you where you just walked because your radar didn't cover that.
I'm not sure all the things that changed, but I wasn't losing my fucking shit over that happening anymore. I played probably half my most recent playthrough with a Better Spawns mod, and half without. Honestly I couldn't tell much difference.
Also, after all the DLC, the Inner Sphere is positively teeming with life. Mercenary companies are operating scattered about, and will hot drop into your missions to help or hinder you. There are wacky televised mech duel contracts on most industrial worlds. There are several mini campaigns that cover most of the major events of the IS pre-Clan Invasion. I honestly can't imagine what more people might want from it. They even finally added melee! It's the game people have been begging for since Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries, and it's frequently all on sale for about $50-ish. Still, haters gonna hate, and CGL has enormously poisoned the well with their shenanigans. But IMHO, it's the best MW game we've ever gotten, or are likely to get.
A lot of people though MW5: Clans was underwhelming compared to MW5: Mercs. It's a linear scripted story with lots of story and cutscenes. But once again, this is the game everyone wanted since Mechwarrior 2, and it's better than ever. I get that it's less replayable than MW5: Mercs and it's career mode, but it's still damned good, and thus far the Ghost Bear expansion is fantastic too.
WhiningCoil
8d ago
That's the other thing that cracks me up about the setting. Anything doesn't make sense from a min-maxing game perspective? Blame graft and corruption! It works, don't get me wrong. It's just hilarious to me that embezzled defense contracts are the glue that holds suspension of disbelief together.
WhiningCoil
8d ago
There's a lot of stuff in the crunch like this that I really don't get.
I love the stuff in the lore that's canonically terrible. Like the Charger. I don't know how much the really old splat books described it as a total design failure but included it in the game anyways. But the recent printings of TROs shitting all over certain mech designs cracks me up.
WhiningCoil
8d ago
Small lasers are pretty weird. Every now and again you see some meme build in MWO that's a light mech going 200 kph spamming 10 small lasers that's just impossible to hit and cores you from behind. But mechs in MW5 tend to not have the sort of build flexibility to let you minmax that crazily. Or HBS Battletech for that matter. Although I think at some point HBS Battletech let you fire your small weapons while you meleed? Was that a thing? Man it's been a long time since I played that game.
But yeah, on most medium mechs and every heavy or assault, small lasers get stripped for more armor.
WhiningCoil
8d ago
I'm staring down the barrel of this as well, my daughter is 5. We play a smattering of board games with her, with the occasional concession (Carcassonne, Ingenious, Kingdomino, My First Castle Panic), and she's watched me play some old games (Super Mario Brothers, Gradius, Galaga). I'm trying to plant the seeds of good behavior by choosing games that have a natural end time (1 credit, 3 lives, etc) and then walking away when I'm done. I also emphasize that I finish all my "daddy chores" after dinner, and she has to have her teeth brushed and get ready for bed before she can watch me play.
Lately she hasn't really cared to watch me play anything, and has preferred I read Lord of the Rings to her instead.
My wife has most of the same fears you do about video games devouring her attention, but none of the first hand experience to discern addicting slop from a fun game, so it's all scary to her.
Personally, I think going with old, offline, preferably couch coop experiences is best. Any old two player NES or SNES game or old arcade games. I have a retro lan in my office, and that may come into play at some point, but it's not part of the plan at the moment. I plan to keep it limited, and keep it in person and social within the friends and family. I do want to avoid hard time stops though. I knew kids who's parents put everyone on strict 15m time limits, and it drove me up a wall when I'd be having a really good run in say, Super Mario Brothers, and they booted me off in World 5 with 4 lives left. I do want my kid to have that sense of accomplishment that video games can give you, and not cutting her legs out from under her with arbitrary limits. But I'll cross that bridge when I get to it I suppose.
WhiningCoil
8d ago
There is a new Mechwarrior 5 expansion! This time we got a full campaign focusing on the Ghost Bears. Which is a huge callback to the Ghost Bear's Legacy expansion for Mechwarrior 2. Some people have fond memories of that I guess. I mostly just remember a bunch of broken missions that frustrated me to death, even attempting to cheat through them when I was 12. Like the super buggy underwater level. The MW2 engine was just not up to the challenge that the mission designers threw at it.
Anyways, I'm told this DLC is 12 missions, I've complete 3, I'm super into it. Story is good so far, none of the characters annoy me, and the Rifleman IIC with a targeting computer replacing the small laser, and some extra armor instead of jump jets is awesome. Just a really solid sniper mech. Haven't unlocked the Kodiak yet though, so we'll see.
I think the difficulty starts a little higher than the base game, which is to be expected. The first mission was a bit of a wake up call for me, and I had to knock the rust off real quick. Especially since you don't get to change your loadout or get a sense of your unit's strengths or weaknesses. After that I felt better. I noticed only two or three of your pilots have the evasion skill, and I don't see reduced armor damage on the research panel. Either because they removed it, or the game was balanced around it being maxed out from the jump. I kind of appreciate this because evasion and reduced armor damage were OP paths that the original campaign was balanced around you maxing out ASAP. I literally saw the CEO of the studio saying certain missions were effectively gated behind you having maxed those out by then. Kind of bullshit IMHO to softlock you in a campaign because you researched the wrong tech. Then again, this was in 1.0 of the game, and I know they rebalanced a lot of the missions people felt were just way too fucking hard since then. What I'm trying to say is, early signs indicate the balance in this expansion is more promising.
WhiningCoil
10d ago
I remain baffled by the people, some of them commenters here, who seem to believe that if we could just sufficiently marginalize blacks, Red Tribe and Blue Tribe could lay their other differences aside and get down to productive cooperation.
On the one hand, after they can agree that rules are rules, and it doesn't matter what "disproportionate" amount of blacks end up in jail, what is there left to argue about? The central plank of blue tribe ideology seems to be rooted in the inherent evil of western white civilization, and exhibit A is blacks as a permanent underclass globally.
On the one hand, yeah, old habits die hard. It is hard to imagine the average blue triber going "Ok, yeah, I admit it, more blacks are in jail because they commit more crime" but then being ok with gun ownership, recklessness towards the climate, or free speech. But I also, simply, have a very difficult time imagining the blue tribe mind without that aforementioned central plank of their ideology.
WhiningCoil
10d ago
You know, this got me thinking about how long the tails of games are now. Like, I adored my father, and when I started playing Nintendo games, he would show off how good he was as Donkey Kong, which was apparently his goto arcade game once upon a time. Blew me away that he could "beat" it on the Nintendo, which if memory serves, and it may not, was completing all 4 screens at least once? I donno. But I had little incentive to play Donkey Kong myself, nor was I amazed at his Donkey Kong "lore", I was just impressed my dad could play an old game, but I preferred the newer ones like Super Mario Brothers 3.
Compared with the 15(?) year legacy of Minecraft, yeah, kids are still going fucknuts over the same game it's feasible that their parents went fucknuts over a decade prior. There are titles so evergreen, they've become a multi-generational institution not unlike reading the same books to your kid that were read to you. The only thing slowing it down is parents' awareness of the dangers of screen time for young children.
WhiningCoil
10d ago
Making incremental progress towards my 200 snatch goal this week. Got up to 116 without any lingering pain. Although the next day some of my calluses were developing gnarly blisters that just ripped off without much effect the next time I worked out. I am hitting a limit where around snatch 80 or so, whatever chalk I had on my hands is long since gone, and its wrecking my grip fighting my sweating palms to keep hold of the bell. Also makes the blistering way worse when I have to keep a deathgrip on the handle because anything less just lets the sweat take the kettlebell away. Ordered a chalk bag I can use to refresh my off hand, and we'll see how that goes. If I can get up and over 120 without pain, I'm curious to see what my next plateau will be, since that's where my back gave out hard last time.
WhiningCoil
10d ago
Getting sidelined by an injury is the worst. I remember when I was doing martial arts, there was still ample I could do injured. Always something I could practice. Of course I was in my 20's then, healed faster, and had way more drive.
Not sure how that works in grappling arts though, since I've never done one. I always had the impression there wasn't much you could practice if you weren't rolling on the mat with people.
WhiningCoil
10d ago
I'm a little older than you. I discovered Minecraft during it's Alpha from reddit, and binged hard along with my at the time girlfriend. We got seriously lost in Minecraft, and just ordered takeout for a week while we indulged our mutual addiction to exploration and crafting. I lost interest at some point after biomes came out I think? That's all so long ago, sometimes I watch videos about Minecraft and outside of the blocky world, I don't recognize anything that is happening anymore.
WhiningCoil
13d ago
I think I've said this before, but I agree with the "girl-dad" criticism. And I reject this notion that empathizing with young men just translates to validating their anxiety and fear. One thing that is almost inescapable watching almost any medium of modern culture is that women act like cunts, while the men tiptoe around them begging forgiveness. I mean, just for instance, compare the Dune novels and David Lynch's adaptation, where the love between Paul and Chani is a fated historic romance. In the newer adaptation I don't think Chani so much as smiles at Paul once, and they supposedly love each other? "Romance" according to modern media is a woman treating a man like garbage, something that got stuck to her shoe that she can't seem to get rid of, and the man gets to feel thankful she settled for you. Being an absolute cunt to someone you ostensibly love is viewed as some political project to reject being a "Stepford Wife".
Unsurprisingly, young boys raised in this environment aren't sold on their role as eternal abuse victim in this new model of "romance". And I sincerely doubt you can get them "step up" into the role by brow beating them, or educating them about their proper gender role being the initiator. They see all around them that even if they "win" they still lose.
You want better men, you need to raise better women.
WhiningCoil
14d ago
I was going to say, didn't Hanania have several public tantrums on his blog about Elon, largely because his twitter derived income fell off a cliff?
WhiningCoil
16d ago
That's good enough for me. My post was less about you specifically being a bot, and more, just... I can't take anything I read on the internet as being written by a human for granted anymore. Even in weird out of the way places like this. I just find myself side eyeing any account that I don't personally recognize from at least 10 years ago.
It's hard to put this into words. The civilisation I care about is dying, and I fear I can do little to change any of that.
I sympathize with this so hard, you have no idea. But you may have more cause to, it does sound your like civilization is going in the shredder maybe a generation before mine is.
Yeah, I don't think Mechwarrior 1-4 are ever getting released again. For a time Mechwarrior 4: Mercs got a free re-release, but the "free license" for that has been withdrawn, and it's no longer distributed officially. MW3 is actually the only one I haven't replayed to completion in recent memory. Perhaps I should make that my next retro project.
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