Zeusthecat

The reason Nintendo hasn't made a Waluigi game is because it would have to be 'M' rated since he is a serial killer. Just look at those evil eyes. :waluigi: If those aren't the eyes of a murdering psychopath then I'm not a cat. Also, I think movies that heavily involve technology typically age just as bad as games. See The Net with Sandra Bullock. The only good part about that movie now is that rad Mozart's ghost stuff.

This might be the thread you're looking for: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/7219-the-last-express/

Damnit dibs. You changed my proclamation to an exclamation!

Exclamation points are scary. I always feel like whatever sentence I am writing could never live up to the expectations introduced by ending it with an exclamation point.

I disagree with Polygon's review of this game. I wore no rose tinted glasses when I played this game for the first time last year and still thought it was really really good and would deserve the same accolades it originally got if it was released today. I think it's fine to gripe a bit about the controls but to complain about the puzzles being too hard and that there are no waypoints or hint system kind of annoys me. In my opinion there was really only one puzzle that was kind of crap (that weird rolling over the pipes puzzle to knock down the tree machine thing) and the rest were designed in a way that made sense but took some time to work through. In other words, they were difficult but fair and I think these types of puzzles are far more satisfying to solve than obvious puzzles. Knocking this game for the puzzles being too hard would be like reviewing a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle and giving it a lower score than a 100 piece puzzle because it was harder to find the pieces you were looking for. Plus, I think a part of what made this game (and a lot of the other LucasArts games) so special for me was the pacing that was imposed by how long it took to work through some of the puzzles. If the puzzles are obvious or there is some kind of heavy hint system at play, the impact of the game and setting is lessened for me. Having difficult puzzles forces me to comb the environments multiple times and burn the settings and items into my memory. It makes the game special to me because not only do I get to enjoy the amazing music and story, but I notice and appreciate every little detail about each environment and interaction that I might otherwise ignore. It has already been around 9 months since I first finished it and I remember every little detail so much more vividly than I typically would with any other modern game that doesn't force you to think. Of course this is all just my measly opinion, but I don't think rose tinted glasses are required for a person to appreciate the greatness of this game as much today as they might have when it first came out.

If anyone is interested, I'm going to attempt to start streaming my nightly Battlefield 4 sessions. I've been playing lately with a few co-workers and we've been having a pretty good time so I figured I'd see how that translates to a stream. Hopefully our party chat isn't too annoying and I apologize in advance if I get into a constant 'spawn and die' loop and start whining. I'll probably start around 9-10PM Arizona time each night and stream for 2-3 hours. A link to my Twitch channel is in my signature.

Maybe it is a misunderstanding and they assumed PC version meant the opinionated in a way that is different from me version? Yes, I'm really really stupid for saying something so corny.

I would say that of all of my posts, probably only around 1-2% have been while I was under the influence of something. What's ironic though is that what I go through is the exact opposite of what you are describing. I do all of my posting sober and then when I am in an altered state of mind (i.e. usually weed), I start to worry that I was being too arrogant or dumb or rambly or whatever when I did my sober posts and am scared to even check back on the forums to see if there are any replies to what I'm sure was a dumb post. So many times I have started a post sober, went and smoked, then came back and deleted everything and logged off because I didn't like where my train of thought was going.

Got the Platinum on this last week and I still hadn't had enough so I went ahead and purchased Battlefield Premium and downloaded the 5 additional map packs. So far I'm really liking all of the additional maps and they all seem at least on par or better than the base maps that came with the game, which were already pretty damn solid. I also started branching out more and have taken a break from exclusively playing Assault and Engineer to level up my Recon and Support kits. I didn't expect to like either of those classes nearly as much as Assault and Engineer but as I unlock guns and attachments and try out different equipment for each I am finding them super fun! It really is impressive how well they balanced each class and how you can always find a solid build to switch to if you need to adjust your strategy to counter whatever the opposing team is doing. Between leveling up classes, guns, land vehicles, choppers, and jets and trying to complete assignments, this game has its hooks in pretty deep. I keep meaning to go back to Destiny since I had only just started but BF4 multiplayer has just been gaming nirvana for me lately.

Oh whoa, I just saw the random dot in the middle of the ocean. I wonder who that could be...

Tycho, I think you dodged my greater point. I gave you a good example of how killing a mosquito is different from killing a black person and thus where speciesism differs from racism. By the example I gave, how can you still claim speciesism is the moral equivalent of racism. Did I not provide a good example for why racist Tycho can't apply the same logic to black people?

You said 4 and 7 were your favorites and I don't see why you wouldn't be allowed to kill a mosquito if those are the two you subscribe to. For 4, are you telling me that killing a mosquito would be bad because this will make the remaining living people very anxious that they too may die prematurely? Doubtful. And even if we assume that we live in a non-speciesist society where all these ingrained speciesist tendencies are gone, it would still be fine to kill a mosquito as long as you do it when nobody's watching. Unless you claim that it would make other mosquitoes sad and anxious that they too may die prematurely but I think there is less evidence to support that than there is to support the idea that plants feel pain, which you dismissed. For 7, it's wrong to kill someone because it will make their family sad. Who is going to be sad when I kill that mosquito? The mosquito's family? Doubtful. And most likely no human would either unless we live in that non-speciesist society. At which point it should be fine for me to kill it when nobody's looking. And yet it would still be wrong to kill a black person for obvious reasons.

Does this not provide some evidence for why speciesism is not the moral equivalent of racism? I am willing to admit that I am speciesist because I am willing to kill a mosquito but I am not willing to admit that that is the moral equivalent of killing a black person on the basis of their race. You said it yourself: "Mosquitos fit into the second, adult humans don't fit into either category". A sub category under adult humans would be adult black people. So why are you still saying that killing a black person is the moral equivalent of killing a mosquito? Why do I need to convince racist Tycho that he is wrong when you basically laid out multiple philosophies that one could follow that would allow them to not value the life of a mosquito while showing that the same logic should not apply to a black person?

So let me re-iterate my stance then: First Tycho, that last post of yours was quality stuff and I have a lot of respect for the fact that you were willing to back down a bit and consider my counter-argument. Second, I think it's worth pointing out that you dismissed my criteria posted above as 'arbitrary' and proceeded to repeatedly insult me and compare me to this ridiculous 'Racist Tycho' character to prove some kind of point which you later admitted was basically just a little game you were playing. I made it clear that I was strictly talking about life forms on the level of a mosquito and yet you accused me of being speciesist and tried to prove that I was no better than a racist for feeling the way I did about fucking mosquitoes. That was poor form man. It was condescending and disrespectful and as I said before, it was a fucking dead end. I would ask you for an apology but I guess after seeing your last post all is forgiven. Just please, don't do that to me again.

Okay, I'm re-energized and ready to put another thought out there. I might regret this... I am not convinced that the ability of an organism to feel pain is necessarily the best criteria for whether or not it is wrong to kill that organism. If the crux of the argument is that we shouldn't cause pain, then wouldn't it be fine to kill things in a way that doesn't cause them pain? So if I kill an organism in its sleep or drug it first to remove its ability to feel pain is it still wrong for me to kill it? When I swat that mosquito, if I do it so fast that it is instantly crushed and there is not enough time for the pain to even reach its brain, have I just done a thing that is totally fine? Of course, Racist Tycho would respond by asking me if it is okay to kill a human in a way that doesn't cause pain and I would respond "of course not". So that leads us to an obvious question. If killing an organism without inflicting pain is still considered wrong, than which organisms is it okay to kill? Is it still fair to say that any organism capable of feeling pain deserves to live and that we should strive not to kill those organisms? Why, even if pain is not inflicted during the killing, does the mere fact that it can feel pain mean that we should not kill it? And if we are going to hold on to that and argue that that is the most important criteria, do we really know that we aren't causing pain to certain plants when we harvest them and eat them? When we brush our teeth, do we know that the bacteria in our mouths that we are killing don't feel pain? If the pain criteria doesn't hold up to this scrutiny, what would that magical criteria be?

I'm in the same boat with the term 'retarded'. Obviously I am very careful with who I use it around but it is a fun sounding word that tickles me in a way other words don't. It kind of makes me feel like a bad person but there are just some words I don't want to let go of. I figure as long as I only use them around people that I know won't be offended and that know I am not using them maliciously, there's no harm right. I think I recall us having this exact conversation in this exact thread a while back.

Gotcha. That's a fair point.

Interesting. I was unaware that some people found the term 'lame' offensive.

That's why I tried to be careful to only talk about it only in terms of weed consumption. Yes, you can OD if you consume enough pure THC. No, I don't think it is possible to consume enough weed in a short enough time to OD because even with the strongest strains, the THC content is too low. And really, once you get to the point that you are talking about OD'ing on pure THC, it kind of becomes irrelevant to the argument of whether or not weed should be legal as you would really have to make a conscious effort to OD and is incredibly unlikely to happen by accident. You are probably more likely to OD on water which people have actually died from.

Why is it considered offensive to use the term 'retarded' to describe something but it is not considered offensive to use the term 'lame' to describe something? Both are terms that can be used to describe a person with disabilities and both also have alternate uses that apply more broadly (retard - delay or hold back in terms of progress; lame - unconvincingly feeble). I kind of feel like 'lame' should be the more offensive word when you look at how it is used. It seems like the term 'retarded' is actually more often used in an accurate context by its alternate definition than the term 'lame' is.

And in that case, sure I probably wouldn't be able to keep it together and stay civil but I also wouldn't expect that anyone would consider my point of view. I think as soon as I start drawing analogies between their behavior and other things that they would see as extreme, I should expect that the only people left listening to me are those that aren't too strongly invested in that viewpoint to begin with. At which point I am just venting and preaching to the choir. And I guess this is a good time to announce that this thread just got Waluigi'd

I don't think you ought to give a shit at all. I'm just letting you know how I and others feel in case it wasn't obvious to you. You may not care about your tone but if you are truly passionate about convincing others of the importance of protecting all forms of life, I would think you might want to make some consideration for how best to keep people engaged while not compromising your points. I think you are being reductive of my argument but I am sure you will disagree. I do give a shit about ethically crucial matter like whether living beings ought to be tortured and killed for no good reason and I am agreeing with most of what you say. But mosquitoes man. I may not have a logical basis to argue this or I am just not as good at probing my logical thought process as you are but I just cannot convince myself that a mosquito is as important as a human. Based on your criteria I am wrong and that's fine. And I'm sorry for saying mean things. You said stuff that elicited an emotional response from me and I typed it and hit Post because I was frustrated.

Okay, how about this. I am speciesist. My views towards mosquitoes are morally equal to a racist person's views towards black people. You have convinced me and I am fine with this. I continue to feel, however, that it is wrong to kill and eat the animals that we kill and eat because of the arbitrary criteria I have chosen for life forms that I deem important. And I mean this sincerely. So what now? Where has this gotten us? It was a fun thought experiment and I thank you for challenging me to really examine why I see things the way I do but I don't think we really accomplished anything and this exercise has resulted in a dead end. You may not see it as such but by belligerently trying to hammer your point home and taking it to the extreme, you have effectively alienated just about everyone else in here. I am honestly pretty irritated with your method of arguing and even though I don't think you intended it, you have come off as condescending and disrespectful to everyone here who has tried to argue with you. Sorry man, no hard feelings but you are really getting under my skin. This is one of those cases where I think this particular conversation is not very well suited to this format.

Okay, so go back to my point about morality being relative to the perspective of the life form and let's consider these racist people a separate life form. By their morality, I guess killing a black person is just as acceptable as killing a mosquito. However, for anyone capable of recognizing the fear and pain and other human characteristics that a black person exhibits, killing a black person would be absolutely wrong while killing a mosquito would be just fine. Yeah, it is kind of an ugly way of looking at it but there has to be some way we can view morality that doesn't put us in the position where we are forced to accept that killing a mosquito is the same as killing a black person. I don't think you can impose some sort of global morality that applies universally. Think about it practically, Tycho. You are never going to be able to convince even a small percentage of people to buy the notion that all life forms are equal. Even if the logic is sound, it is a dead end. Whether it is logical or not, most humans do not recognize all life forms as equal and probably never will. That being said, I still do think that it is wrong to kill animals and eat them. But it is not wrong to kill mosquitoes and eat them.

But racist Tycho should be able to recognize that there is little to no difference between the way a black person exhibits pain and fear and the way a white person exhibits pain and fear. I don't think your analogy holds up when you consider my entire post. A black person is very recognizably human and exhibits all of the recognizable characteristics that any other human does. Practically speaking, even with the most racist person, I doubt they would be completely blind to the pain and fear and other human characteristics that a black person would exhibit.