Sententia

Wrestling is LARPing for very muscular and/or fat men.

I stepped on a long, thin, sharp, upright nail yesterday while working construction on a garage. More accurately I hopped backwards off a ladder onto it, sliding easily through my thick-soled boot and into my heel. I thought the fastest a human could react was half a second, but apparently my extensive focus on footwork through tennis, fencing, soccer, and tae kwon do has grown a ninja speed because the instant I felt the sharp pain in my left heel I shifted the weight onto the ball of the foot and lifted slightly, allowing the right foot to land and support me. Upon removing my boot and sock the only damage to the heel was a very shallow cut through some of that callous skin with no bleeding at all, so I guess there are nerves there but no blood vessels? The experience reminded me of that talk about thinking with words vs without words from the random thought thread, because within the few seconds as and after it happened I had this train of thought: the way we value what we do with our lives usually has to do with helping others or building our skills, and there are some things people believe have inherent value such as music. I enjoy a lot of activities that have a physical skill aspect which improving at will increase my abilities in general. Playing piano is one example, playing competitive video games like starcraft 2 or competitive games like tennis. Among the things people consider most worthwhile are helping others, such as volunteering for local environmental cleanup, giving money to charities, working for charities like Water to help in other countries, and these are all things that give an immediate benefit, in other words what you're putting in has an output basically instantly. In cases where we're building our skills we might never or very rarely use them in real situations. Does using my abilities to avoid getting stabbed in the foot make those physical activities I've done more valuable? In reverse, if I had never stepped on that nail does my time spent learning those physical skills become less valuable in contrast? For example I practice martial arts and I'm very good at it, but it probably will never be put into use, does that make it less valuable as an activity to spend my time on? There's no conclusion from me, but I did find out that threats to my personal being make me dourly contemplate philosophy.

I thought it was hilarious but I'm also hardened towards antagonistic animals. If it were another dog it would be weird because that dog could be someone's escaped pet, but not because there's some thing about dogs being special. Doesn't matter what it is, if it's a threat to something you love responding with force is appropriate, it would be weird to do otherwise.

It's sort of a joke by nature, but no it's real.

I saw recently that the church is now giving people years off purgatory for following the pope on twitter. Fascinating.

Even though regression exists in places on the whole things are looking up, and I'm glad that trans rights got rolled into the fight for gay rights so they can progress simultaneously. All of this is leading toward a debate on sexuality more broadly as well, which will be interesting when it comes to children.

even though I've never met him, having listened to almost every episode of the bombcast it feels like a close friend passed. I've listened to Ryan talk for more hours than I've spent hanging out with some of my friends from high school, and reading through this thread almost brought me to tears. He was funny and straightforward. R.I.P. Ryan Davis.

Haha don't worry about it, I think we all know we're a pretty progressive group. This game has been consuming me, even to the point that I cut back on my SC2 to make room. It's becoming a problem when my addictions deny one another.

Check out the Multiplayer Networking subforum to find out, I don't actually know myself it's set up in there so each game has its own thread, and there's a couple for Steam/Xbox/PS3 name sharing.

Not really since they can spawn with 0 or 1 traits and many of them are negative, having a neutral one in there in terms of mechanics just slightly tips the scale against a child spawning with 2 mechanically affecting traits.

Assuming you're the online identity of Petman I voted for your girlfriend out of fear. please don't bullet my face

I'm okay with it because it's directly across from a religious monument with the ten commandments on it. It's like a video game, you walk between them and hit A or B to gain reputation points with that faction.

Jesus that's like 60 pizzas. Think of all the pizza you could have put into your face!

I guess I just don't see a need to separate marriage and civil union in such a way. As far as I know churches are already a cosmetic gesture in the process, what gets a couple the actual benefits of being married is doing up all the paperwork and sending it in to the government to get approved, not the religious ceremony bit where they announce their marriage to the world. For example the jewish lesbians that got married recently after living together for like 40 years, they had a ceremony with friends and family at their church and announced their marriage, but since they don't live in a state where gay marriage is legal they're not actually in a Legal Marriage contract and so aren't getting the benefits. Right now I think there's confusion between the concept of a religious marriage and a Legal Marriage. Any church can host a ceremony and any couple can say what they want, but to get the part that matters practically you need to get a marriage license, then do a ceremony which doesn't require any religious overtones and can be done for 50 bucks generally, right at the courthouse where you got the license. It would be a kind of funny middle finger to religions to have the government drain marriage of benefits and give them to civil unions, but either way really the important thing is that it happens. edit: Personally I think we draw the line where it is right now: religious organizations don't have the ability to grant couples the state-provided benefits of a Legal Marriage, so any bigotry they display is protected under freedom of speech and the fact that they're a private organization. If you want to argue that's a bad thing and people should be punishable for their words as well as their actions, well first of all I'd agree with you but also that's a much larger topic to address. p.s. rad link to philosophy bites james, love that cast

I feel like I should contribute now 4-5 years ago on newgrounds I stumbled across a handful of short, cute animations about love that made me think, check it out: There she is!! step 1 There she is!! step 2 There she is!! step 3 There she is!! step 4 There she is!! final step Here's a few thoughts on it,

Escapism is a less accurate word than immersion because it isn't about avoiding your life, it's about being presented a more convincing illusion. Also I feel like there's a pejorative undertone when people say escapism, for example I think Chris on the podcast takes issue with the concept of people striving for escapism but I don't think there's anything wrong with striving for immersion, and the two describe the same path for the hardware and developers, just different perspectives from the player. Frankly I think immersion has more to do with NPC behaviour and better animation coverage. In The Last Of Us Joel raises his hand to cover his head when walking under water streams, grasps whatever cover he's crouching near, he'll slam someone's head or body against whatever random wall or outcropping is nearby if you happen to finish them with a melee attack. That last one is kind of weird but it's an impressive animation feat to either have all the terrain tagged or have it systemized in such a way that looks realistic.

Awesome miffy! Congratulations

The four other celebs are different each time but I'm always Dustin Hoffman even when I try to fudge it.

The correct response is to get a list of the actual facts tattooed to your chest, jump on their table and tear your shirt off screaming in their faces WELCOME TO MY WORLD MOTHERFUCKERS WELCOME TO MY WORLD

I'll just firmly stake my ignorant ass to Einstein, it's worked out for me so far It's 4:30 am here at my college, I was hoping to bike home at midnight but it started storming and hasn't let up. Now I'm forced to bike anyways to beat the morning traffic. Time for a half hour through a storm, sigh...

The science behind sleep or improving/removing it hasn't moved forward in a while as far as I know. The thing about sleep is it's partially a rest for your brain and part for your muscles, right? It's something the advancement of cyborg technology might have an effect on, without muscles to futz with maybe your brain will get bored of sleep faster. Thinking about the future of life-improving science yesterday made me realize how young I am and how fast things are moving. It struck me that when I was born we were using floppy disks and computers with less ability than today's flip phones, and recently we've successfully tested cyborg arms controlled by direct input from your brain. How far are we really from gradually replacing our decaying meatsuits while somehow keeping our brains capable? Also the existence and decent availability of the Roomba is a shock to me still.

I found this on the internet and giggled for a solid minute. Also ironic (or not? I can never tell) that I found it right after father's day. God damn it my dad would've laughed so much if I sent him this yesterday!

I women doors open. Some doors like it, others are ambivalent, a small number get offended.

I don't think I've ever seen a person hold a door open for someone else, it's always a sort of open the door, hold it long enough so the person behind you can reach it before it closes much, and walk through first yourself. People do it for each other all the time at my college regardless of gender, it just depends how far behind the person is to the one at the door.

My view on this is pragmatic rather than idealistic. There are several reasons to punish wrongs, the biggest among them: to create the fear of punishment to discourage others from committing wrongs, and to prevent that individual from committing the same wrong again. Also we can speak very generally about the average person and creating an environment where compassion is convenient and awareness is taught by society rather than independently learned, but that doesn't mean we should ignore the fact that there are people who consciously eschew what's convenient when it doesn't match up with what's good. Just because the bell curve exists and most people fall in the middle doesn't mean the ends aren't real. I think you're conflating the concept of free will with the idea of fate. I'm not the most eloquent type so the words aren't coming exactly right, but the way I see it is because our universe lacks randomness in any capacity, everything that happens would always have happened regardless. In a sense 'fate' is reality because of this. It doesn't mean we don't make choices, but our choices will be based on our genetics and upbringing, who our friends and relatives are and how they behave in front of us; the cumulative experience of our life, all of which was predetermined.