Zeusthecat

That is so awesome! Thanks for setting that up.

This topic may have been discussed at some point here before but I'm curious to know what the prevailing opinion (if there is one) in modern feminism is regarding child rearing. Considering biological differences and the fact that breastfeeding is something that only the mother is physically capable of doing, is the general thought that a mother should sacrifice her other responsibilities when a child is born instead of the father for the greatest possible benefit to the child if it is possible to do so? (Obviously, I don't expect the answer is as simple as yes or no) This has been something I've been trying to come to terms with for awhile and I think is a big factor (maybe the biggest factor?) when it comes to retention and pay gaps between men and women in the workforce. I am very pro-breastfeeding (strongly reinforced by my upbringing and my wife's education) and I think if it is feasible, a woman should strive to breastfeed her child even if it is a detriment to her career. I recognize that this is probably not a popular opinion around here but it is an irrefutable fact that breastfeeding is vastly more beneficial to a baby than formula feeding and this is an area where there is an actual biological difference between men and women. I think this would be easier to answer if we lived in a world where the job industry recognized the importance and value of parenting and gave adequate maternal/paternal leave and fair pay that is on par with those who don't have children. Unfortunately this isn't the case in most places (at least here in the US).

Does anyone else on these forums live in Arizona? I don't think I've ever seen a single other person here showing any place in Arizona as their location. I'd also be curious to see a global map showing all of the locations represented by people in this community.

Sorry, I missed this. I agree with everything you are saying here. On the other side of that coin though, while we may have an increased opportunity to experience other people's perspectives, I think having people abstracted behind a wall of text causes us to think of each other less as people than we might otherwise and often results in less fruitful conversation. But who knows? In a lot of cases these conversations might only be taking place because of social media and it might not be fair to just say that they shouldn't happen on social media. I am conflicted I guess.

I would argue that for a lot of people, interaction on social media has replaced a lot of social interaction that they would have normally had face to face. It's definitely not true for everyone but I think it would be hard to deny that, on average, face to face interaction between two people has become diminished and a lot of that interaction has shifted to taking place on social media. And I think this is one of the really good things about social media. It is certainly important and should not go away. The main issue I am getting at is the negative impact social media has had on the way we debate and disagree with each other and how we categorize the other person as a result of those interactions. There seems to be this thing where once you have posted an opinion or thought on the internet, it forever defines you and a lot of people might find themselves relentlessly defending a poorly thought out or not very well articulated (and this is exacerbated by the fact that a lot of people probably aren't great at translating their opinions into a text based format) opinion because internet pride. Luckily, there are places like Idle Forums where there is a community and format to the discourse that allows for a lot more nuance than would be allowed on a site like Twitter. I think it is a lot easier to see this negative impact on Twitter specifically than with any other form of social media. So many debates and disagreements have moved to Twitter and it is a fucking madhouse. People are forced to use their best wordsmithing skills to get their point across in 140 characters and because there is little room for expanding on that, it commonly devolves into people just slinging shit back and forth and misinterpreting each other and just stressing each other the fuck out. If Twitter was only actually used just for dissemination of information and for people to post random thoughts and opinions without having to go through an insane fragmented debate afterwards, it would be much more useful in my opinion. These debates are better had in a different format. Face to face would obviously be ideal but since that isn't always possible and these are important debates to be had, it would be better if they at least happened in a place like this rather than a place like Twitter. Another thing I am curious about: do you guys think Twitter is truly necessary for high profile people? Like, let's say if people in a position like Anita Sarkeesian abandoned Twitter, would that be a net positive or negative impact to their lives? I imagine a lot of the stress and frustration of seeing a constant feed of shit would be reduced but would it actually hurt their business or limit the capability to send their message? I'm curious what others think and I'm sure there are a lot of complex factors to consider. Edit: I see megaspel and Apple Cider kind of touched on some of this as I was typing it.

Sometimes I wonder if I spend abnormal amounts of time in deep thought. I've realized recently that in my hour or so of commuting every day, I don't really hear or comprehend any of the words in whatever podcast I am listening to because I am too distracted with some thought or another. I'm starting to wonder if it is actually becoming a hindrance in my day to day life because there are some days where I just keep putting off things I need or want to do so I can finish whatever train of thought I was on. It is especially bad after going into the garage in the evening to consume my intoxicating substance of choice because then I come back inside and see an inviting couch to just sit on and think with a slightly different perspective than I had a few minutes prior. So, on another random thought note, I find it interesting how throughout the day, I will get random surges of euphoria mixed in with random surges of melancholy and hopelessness. It's just weird how fleeting those feelings are and how they pop up out of nowhere, stick around for a few seconds or minutes, and then go away. It's almost become a meta experience where I recognize I am suddenly feeling abnormally happy and start to guess at how long it will last and when I will feel shitty or frustrated again. Then when I start to feel shitty, I just sit there wondering how long that will last and when I will get a surge of euphoria again. I wonder if a lot of this is just some weird placebo effect where I am only noticing it because I am expecting it to happen and if it is, I wonder if it would be possible to harness that to steer myself towards longer and more lasting periods of feeling good. Then I realize I just wasted a whole shitload of time.

I've been getting back into this game over the last few nights and it is really really good! Everything Thrik said above is spot on and this is an incredibly fun multiplayer game. I also realized I am only 3 trophies away from the platinum on this and figured I would start with trying to get the trophy for successfully delivering and detonating 5 bombs in Obliteration mode. It has proven to be incredibly challenging (only 1 successful delivery in over 5 hours of playing Obliteration) but has also been an absolute blast. So many extremely close calls where the bomb is about to detonate and then some asshole blows my face off and disarms it at the last second. This mode is just constant edge-of-your-seat, white knuckle excitement. As far as the classes go, I have really gotten into a good groove with the assault/medic class. I have also put in a decent amount of time with the engineer class but even with vehicle heavy levels I tend to find myself switching back to the assault class to stay more in my comfort zone. I absolutely suck with recon so haven't really done much with that and support doesn't seem that interesting to me but as I play more I'm sure I'll start to delve into those further. If anyone else is still playing this, hit me up on PSN. I hope to keep this in my rotation for the foreseeable future and may even pick up some DLC at some point if the vanilla maps ever get old.

Didn't Paul Hogan rip one of those boomerang antennas off of a limo in Crocodile Dundee and throw it at someone? I think I remember him fighting some gangs and maybe having his "girlfriend" kidnapped at some point too. Although I don't remember him riding a bicycle or shooting a fly on his wall.

I was forcibly raised as a devout Seventh Day Adventist and managed to come to my senses around the age of 17 or so (I'm 30 now). Having been immersed in that shit throughout my entire childhood I kind of tend to agree with some of the more militant atheists on the damage that religion does to society. The main problem I have with a lot of religions is the way they promote faith as the ultimate truth to everything. When you grow up being told that things will work out if you "just have faith" or that "faith is all you need", you end up with a fundamentally broken thought process and it is frustrating to see all these other poor kids being conditioned to not question things and accept them just because.

Good timing. I just finished re-watching this with my wife a couple weeks ago (ended up buying it on blu ray) and came to discover that there was a 25th episode that wasn't available on Hulu when I originally watched it. So much more closure than I originally got having only watched through episode 24! I plan to watch it again at some point with the English dubs just to see what that experience is like. I expect it to suck balls and don't see how they are going to translate the scenes where Okabe tries to say something in English but whatever. I also watched a some other anime over the last several months and just never managed to come back in here and update. Knights of Sidonia - This was a pretty interesting show and I liked it well enough. I especially liked the effort that went into making this show a little more realistic as far as how physics works. And the talking bear was cool. It wasn't a great show but I'm definitely curious to see where it goes from here. Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood - This show never really clicked with me for some reason. It feels like it should have been a more serious show with epic moments but it just kept devolving into juvenile silliness and everyone always survives everything so shit just kind of happens with little feeling of consequence. I would say it left a positive impression overall but it did not resonate with me the way it seems to have resonated with a lot of other people. Death Note - I started out really liking this show. Like REALLY liking this show. Then, about halfway through it started to go a little overboard with the plot and certain other characters. Then, about 2/3rds of the way through the show it completely lost me and I just kind of started actively despising every character in the show. I would be curious to know what others around here thought of this show but for me I might have watched one or two others but I can't remember right now.

Yeah, I can definitely see that being a pain. I typically beat the first one with around 50% completion on my game save and have zero motivation to go back through trying to 100% everything. I definitely want to check out the new DKC games when I finish clearing my backlog.

Last week I beat Donkey Kong Country again. Fuck all the haters, this game is awesome and just has such a great sense of atmosphere. Also, are these games honestly considered difficult? I feel like I hear that a lot and I just really don't get it. Yeah, some levels require several tries to get a feel for how it all flows and where the enemies are but it feels like a pretty standard game to me as far as difficulty goes. Also, the music in this game is great, especially the underwater levels. This might be one of the only games where I actually look forward to water levels because they are some of the easiest levels and have some of the best music in the game.

I think the correct term is "slippery-er".

I think that is really underselling what Minecraft is about. What makes Minecraft great to me is that all of the systems it employs come together to basically create a human progress simulator. Sure you can just play in creative mode and treat it like a set of Legos and in that case, sure I guess I would agree that it really isn't much more than a digital set of Legos. But try playing on hard difficulty in survival mode and the experience is entirely different. There may not be any explicit, well defined goals (unless you go after the various achievements, in which case, yes there are actually explicit goals) but I found that the only goal you really need is to try to survive, and to work towards making it easier to survive. With these as my only real 'goals' in the game, I ended up dumping somewhere north of 1000 hours over a couple of years. Starting out, it was just building a simple shelter, a source of food, and some basic means to protect myself. But as time went on I found that other smaller goals just organically came up all over the place. Maybe I needed certain materials to upgrade my shelter or my food production and so I would set off on an adventure to find a biome that had those materials or delve into a cave to find some rare minerals or abandoned mines with chests containing items that couldn't be found anywhere else. Then, after some time I might realize that I need a secondary base in this location to facilitate and streamline the process of gathering and storing these materials. Then, as more time goes on, I realize that having a minecart track linking my two bases would make it a lot easier to get from base A to base B and to transport entire chests full of material between the two. Then, somewhere in this whole process, I might find something amazing in a nearby biome and get completely sidetracked by my own curiosity, which would then present another set of mini-goals. Then, I might decide that one of my buildings gets blown up too much by creepers and it would be better if it was a self-repairing building (because that is way cooler than just building a boring ass fence around it) so I would device a redstone circuit to automatically push new cobblestone blocks into place whenever portions of the building are destroyed. At this point, surviving is hardly even an issue any more but I continue to press on and make progress because somehow, my brain has told me that those are worthwhile and interesting goals. And they have been. So much so that I still can't think of a single game that has had nearly the impact on me that Minecraft has. When you step back and look at the bigger picture, all of this came from the simple goal to survive and I think that is a pretty awesome representation of the human experience. In fact, I don't think any game even comes close to scratching the surface when it comes to representing the evolution and progress of humanity from a vulnerable species just trying to survive to the lords we are today.

But I imagine they weren't too keen on the whole "sex out of wedlock" stuff which I think is one of the biggest driving factors behind the prevailing view about sex today. No matter how you slice it, I think people's interpretation of the Bible is what primarily drives almost all negative views of sex in our culture. If you are claiming there is some other cultural influence that is responsible for these views, I would be curious to know what you think they are. Anecdotally, growing up my mom was very open about sex and all of that stuff and we were very religious. But it was very clear that this was only acceptable between two married people and any sexually suggestive media and whatnot was bad because it encouraged sex out of wedlock and unclean thoughts and all that bullshit.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to hate a person or find them despicable and if it is really fair to put those people at fault for the issues I have with them. I mean, if you boil it all down, even grown adults are products of their environment and whatever influences they have experienced over their lives. Is it fair for me to think of someone as a fuckhead for being an overtly racist asshole or for sending death threats to people they disagree with? The more I think about it, the more I wonder. What was it like for this person growing up? Did they have abusive parents? Did they have any friends? Do they suffer from depression or some other kind of mental disorder? Anyone who has an opinion, however vile it may be, has in some way had that opinion shaped by outside influences. Whether it was their upbringing, the group of friends they may have, an influential person they may have latched onto, or a myriad of other possibilities. When you really consider everything that goes into forming an opinion, I wonder if it is really fair to categorize some people as "good" and some people as "bad". Am I a "good" person for being open-minded and having some of the more progressive opinions that I have or did I just get lucky that all of the inputs into my life and resulting choices that were made led to me thinking the way that I do. I think that it is more or less random and that I just got that lucky combination of inputs that made me into a "good" person (at least I hope I am). I think at some level I've had this mentality for a long time and just never really thought about it much. When I take a look at the people I know, I realize I have plenty of people who are close to me that are racist, sexist, homophobic, and all other sorts of nasty. But I don't see any of them as bad people. As I've gotten to know people with some of these characteristics, I usually come to find that in a lot of ways, they are genuinely good people with just a few fucked up and misinformed opinions. Rather than write these people off I think it is best to engage them and hopefully become one of those influences that starts to change the way they think about some of those things. Not sure where I'm going with this, hence the Random Thought thread...

I assume by "best" game we're really talking about "favorite" game? If that is the intent, we do have an existing thread for that: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8642-favorite-game-of-all-time/ (And my answer is still Minecraft)

I think we have the Bible to thank for that dichotomy.

None of us have voices on the internet because the internet doesn't have vocal chords. Duh.

Family Matters.

I went ahead and tested this out. First, I found a bushy area to stand in where I observed a steady and consistent frame rate drop. Then I started with everything maxed out and v-sync on and lowered various settings individually to see which ones had the biggest impact. With everything maxed it was sitting at a steady 37 FPS. With Graphics Detail set to low and everything else maxed it rose to 47 FPS. With Anti-Aliasing set to 4x (8x being the max) and everything else maxed it jumped to 53 FPS. Lowering it further to 2x maxed it out at 60 FPS. So it looks like for me anti-aliasing is the biggest culprit when it comes to low frame rates in Dragon Age Origins. Luckily, it doesn't ever really get below 25 FPS so it's not really too much of an issue. Just kind of irritating and a little weird that a GTX 580 can't manage to maintain 60 FPS for a game from 2009 that doesn't seem like it would be too graphically intensive.

Someone didn't carry the Taylor series out far enough.

Good thought, I'll test it out and report back. Maybe I'm just being over confident in my setup but it would surprise me if this game was so graphically demanding that it would necessitate lowering some of the settings to reduce frame rate drops in certain areas. Even with some of what I've read about Bioware games allegedly being poorly optimized for Nvidia cards, I would expect a 580 to crush this game.

I'm 30 today. Yay.