Badfinger

You guys say "ocarina" weird! That's not meant to be critical it just... filled up my whole brain when you said it. Also Pete Rose TOTALLY bet on his own team. It has been impressed on me, with baseball people who are way smarter than me, that him betting on his own team to win when he was the manager has large repercussions over an entire season. If you are betting on yourselves to win every day in a game where the best teams ever lose 40% of their games, you are doing irrational things to try to win beyond what you should be doing.

I am really put off by smoking, and the few times I've come in contact with marijuana smoke I did not enjoy the experience. I imagine I would have a similar feeling with consuming it some other way, and thus I am not interested. It's not worth it for me to find out one way or another. With regards to alcohol, 1) ~Tradition!~, it's part of religion and thus "normal" and 2) my parents raised us in a way that alcohol was a food. It was normal, and not illicit. I could have had a glass of wine with dinner or a beer watching football if I'd wanted them in my teens, which I declined. I didn't drink in college basically right up until my 21st, and I certainly didn't binge. I don't drink to get drunk, and it's so frequent that I am driving that I can't even if I wanted to, which I don't. But, I like how alcohol tastes. I like the fun of tasting beers and wines and some spirits. Alcohol has been a food and an activity for me much more than merely a social lubricant, and it has definitely never just been a substance.

I 100% got started on Tinder one day because I wanted a laugh. It leads to an overwhelming desire to swipe right on everyone, because it's way more interesting that way. There still has to be a mutual agreement to start a conversation, which is intriguing but often less interesting. It's really kind of weird to see how many profiles say "I won't message first" or "I'm going to enjoy swiping left" when the app, unlike other social meeting platforms, puts you 100% in control of the available population that can talk to you. It's also boring to get a match and then not have them say anything.

I understand. I just want to celebrate how rad Sigourney Weaver continues to be.

Sigourney Weaver is that, as well. It's hard to improve on the "original" best.

Better update that profile. I'm with you, btw. Tinder GOTY 2014.

It makes perfect sense to talk about League of Legends in this context. For the intents and purposes of this discussion, they might as well be the same game. It's perfectly reasonable to bounce ideas off of their methodology, see what works, compare what you've thought of to what they've done, etc. Riot has basically made the statement with their wallet that being a professional game player can be your job for as long as you can stay in the league. The team stipends are the same no matter where you place on the season. I mean, I think it's totally valid if you decide you don't like any of it, but I think it's silly to not take lessons learned from how the other half lives. That's kind of what I mean. Does TI Team #16 still exist 6 months later (The answer is actually no, it was essentially disbanded through allegations of match fixing which sounds FASCINATING. TI #15 also disbanded)? To get to TI, outside of about 8 teams is what you're doing pausing your life to make a run at one big shot to cash in, or can Dota actually be your job? Making your living by winning a few tournaments a year is not a good business model. It's weird to ask this considering the podcast discussion, but is TI actually inviting more teams than the professional Dota scene can support year round?

Believe it or not, I was reading that page right as I was writing the post. It's still not totally cut and dried, and they basically say the iPhone 6 is the best.

X-Wing Alliance is an excellent video game. X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter is basically an arena shooter but in star wars space ships. Wow, the original dark forces as well.

When I came back to this a year or so ago I found the game extremely disorienting. There was something about the rendering or the movement that was bothering my eyes and making me nauseous. I also lost my save some time between when I bought it new and now, which is disappointing. It made me sad. I loved FC2 before I even knew what Idle Thumbs was, and listening has nurtured that love. Now it's love lost.

That is precisely what I did, except I'm horrible and I did it with the conceit that I knew before I bought it that I was going to return it. That was literally the only flight stick I could find in a brick and mortar store in the area.

I feel similarly. I used to chase that electronic dragon. I had 4 phones in maybe less than 3 years. Then I got an iPhone, and the battery life made me content with my fancy pocket computer. That was two years ago, and it's starting to slide down the inevitable battery death slope that all my phones have had. I'd like nice battery life again, and Android phones have really improved in that regard, but I'm whiny and old now and don't want to put in the effort to find the best phone, and yet I don't really know that I just want to point at the newest iPhone and go "THAT ONE" like a child.

Now I'm self conscious about my vision.

WELCOME. How long have you had that stick? I tried it and wasn't really thrilled with it. Returned it in the 2 week window and got a Thrustmaster T-Flight for like 10 bucks more. I watched the Giant Bomb QL, and suddenly I'm inspired to play again. Him winning a dogfight and cashing in was really fun and cool.

A couple of things I took away from the podcast - Valve is The Dota 2 Company. I thought it was somewhat funny to hear the oft-leveraged gamer criticism that a company is allocating resources wrong and to go "finish a game" leveraged against another portion of a company. The event planners, sound designers, project planners for live stage events don't have other roles in game development. I can't imagine they're anything but dedicated full time to producing the events they do. They are Dota2 employees. I applied to an esports project coordinator role at another company, and from the description and role requirements I don't know that there's any way I could have been used in any sort of other development. I mean if you just imagine it was me, I can't suddenly be rolled on to creating Half Life art assets. Unless they accept MS-Paint... Secondly, the money. Again with the sports analogies, but the pro gaming scene is very analagous to Major League Baseball. The guys in MLB are completely set. If you're on a roster for like 2 months ever you get a pension and healthcare for life. If you make it, you've made it. If you toil in minor league baseball and you aren't fast tracking, you might be making less than minimum wage, eating peanut butter 3 times a day, and sharing an apartment with 5 other guys so you have somewhere you can afford to live. There's more money at the top, and it's nice that Dendi makes a nice living, but to have a vibrant, changing community you need dozens or hundreds of viable teams. Puppey and Dendi are the Jeter and ARod of Dota. They don't need to win TI to be rich and famous. The number of guys who make a nice living from streaming and sponsorships has to be like 25-50 in the West, right? The money needs to not be concentrated at the top. There needs to be large handfuls of teams who don't make it to TI for every team that does who can still point to the books financially and be ok. I don't think I have answers for how to do that, but just saying prize money is going up doesn't actually mean everyone's making more money.

Ok, I'm really uncomfortable with basically obliquely being called a racist because I eat meat. I am not sure this is a subject where a discussion can have inroads, because it turns from a discussion into an accusation no matter how we try to be civil, but I was at least trying to articulate my thoughts or feelings in a cogent way. Now what I feel is attacked. Not my ideas, me personally.

In a hypothetical society where it is a crime to kill animals and a crime to kill people, if a dog is shot and killed should it carry the same punishment as a person being shot and killed? I never claimed you were wrong. In fact, I'm willing to say you're probably right. But I guess I am comfortable in my morally grey wrongness. I am telling you I disagree on a level beyond forum arguments that eating an animal is equivalent to eating a person. And since that is now the entire thread, the thread doesn't have value to me. Like, I am reading your posts and I literally can't comprehend them because your statements don't register to me on plane higher than appealing to my distaste for racism. I honestly don't see the similarity of evidence for not killing other living things vs killing other people. I promise I'm not trying to bait you, or "prove" you're wrong. I'm trying to explain what I'm feeling when I read what you've written. The answer to your question below is I do not think a white person and a black person are different things, but I think animals and people are different things. Thus I have formed my judgement for how to view those things separately.

I disagree on a fundamental level that killing animals is equivalent morally or ethically to killing humans, and the same for eating. With your position taking that as a given truth, and you playing the defacto role of moral and ethical arbiter here, I'm not sure this is a conversation I can continue in good faith.

You can eat them for sustenance. That's a real function. We as a society don't condone human sacrifice. We also don't condone animal sacrifice! Sacrifice and offerings are functionally, socially different than killing for food. They are non-equivalent. Also I have to find out where you shop, because at the grocery store fresh vegetables are fucking expensive. e: I'm looking at your spreadsheet. You have access to fresh vegetables at like a third the price I do.

Ouch, sorry to hear that! Congratulations and condolences on your first break.

Mystery of the Moroccan House is the stand alone dlc to Gone Home.

"Legalization" is really broad. What are we specifically in favor or opposed to legalizing? My actual question: if we legalize the sale, possession, and personal use of marijuana (which is what I am like 95% sure this question is?), how does that affect any of the stuff that's not just one smoking/eating it, Zeus? This is not a rhetorical question. If we legalize smoking marijuana, do we actually get any of that other stuff? It FEELS like no? I am basically fine with decriminalizing marijuana, but I think it's nasty.

I have always heard very nice things about Madison. I'll not say anything about the rest of 'sconsin. This map continues to be amazingly awesome.

I would very much like some (more) vegan and vegetarian recipes from you all to be posted in one of the cooking threads, so I can cook and eat them. This doesn't have anything to do with the ethical or moral questions of the whole thing, but I have a feeling for me personally the complexity of getting the full nutritional value out of a vegan or vegetarian diet might not be economically viable. When I'm doing it right, I can eat for under $5 a day including yogurt, cheese, eggs, with 40% of my intake being lean protein and all the frozen veggies I can cram in. I don't think I could do that without chicken or pork, though.

You're taking it too literally. I'm being silly. I dislike the gameplay that is derived from sniper rifles, so any game that deemphasizes or marginalizes them is in my good graces.