Cordeos

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Posts posted by Cordeos

  1. Posted

    I kinda view the Green Party vote this way. It sounds like I'm joking, but I'm not. I voted for Cynthia McKinney in 2008 because of my disillusion with politics.

     

    Yeah that is part of why I am considering voting Green, I want to vote for a presidential candidate, just not either of the major party ones. I also think the two party system is fundamentally flawed so supporting a third party candidate fits with that.

     

    Probably going to write myself in for every single candidate race on my ballot.

  2. Posted

    What would be the point in voting with a blank ballot?

    It shows you are willing to show up and vote, you just dont want to vote for any of the available options. Some countries actually include a 'protest vote' option on the ballot so it can be interpreted correctly. My political science professor in South Africa always used this option because she had serious issues with how the voting system worked in SA and the ANC always wins anyway.

  3. Posted

    Pulling this out of the past to say:

     

    "Man, reading about the UK maybe leaving the EU makes me really wish that the US had more direct votes over important things. I find it amazing that such important decisions as Scotland leaving the UK and the UK leaving the EU are left to the voting public to decide."

    The US has a lot of systems to keep the people from making decisions. The electoral college and Senators being appointed until 193 being two great examples.

     

    That being said, I am not sure what kind of agreement the US is involved in is the equivalent of the Scottish or EU referendums. 

     

    In other news:

    This is exactly what is wrong with the current state of international governance and I am disgusted by US support for and arm sales to Saudi Arabia.

     

    "UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says he faced "unacceptable" pressure to remove the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen from a blacklist over child casualties.

    Mr Ban said a number of countries had threatened to cut off vital funding for many UN programmes.

    He said the decision to remove them from the UN list of violators of children's rights was "one of the most painful" he'd had to make.

    Saudi Arabia denies the threats."

    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36494598

  4. Posted

    Some of these issues stem from the issues with a two party system. I am a member of Socialist Alternative which is a rather small political party who is not running a candidate for president. My options for voting for president are:

     

    The Green's candidate who has no hope of winning and might not even get on the ballot in all 50 states, but who is probably closest to me politically.

    The Democratic candidate who I disagree with on economic, environmental and foreign policy issues and partially align with on social justice and civil rights issues.

    The Libertarian candidate who might actually make it into the debates, but who I fundamentally disagree with on just about everything and has no hope of winning.

    The Republican candidate who is a terrible racist, misogynist asshole whose policies are confusing and mostly unformed, but I will most likely hate.

     

    This is further complicated by the fact that we do not use the popular vote to elect our president. There is a good chance that Minnesota will go for Hillary, all she needs is 50% of the vote +1 vote, every vote after that is effectively meaningless. However if I vote against her I will still in effect be voting for her because my residency in the state effects its population which is how electoral votes are allocated.

    At this point I am leaning Green because it is where my vote will have the most impact. If they hit 10% of the national vote they would get federal funding and if they get to 15% might get into the presidential debates. Neither of these scenarios are particularly likely right now.

  5. Posted

    I'm worried that the Left is turning into Republican primary voters in that both groups are demanding more and more ideological purity from their candidates. I can't begrudge anyone disliking Hillary, but this attitude that I've seen some liberals (exclusively on twitter) profess conflates supporting Hillary with murder. It's a dangerous path to set down.

     

    What really bothers me is that of course a politician who has ascended as far as Clinton will have a ton of compromises and questionable decisions in her past. National politics under any political system is going to be fraught with this stuff and pretending otherwise strikes me as a little naive. Sanders enjoys the benefit of being from a small, very liberal state, a fact that I never see his followers cop to. If he was running in a state like New York, or California, there's no way his policies would be as liberal as they currently are, because he would no longer have the luxury of appealing to a very niche portion of Democratic voters.

     

    Finally, I'm kind of bummed that the numbers show Clinton getting more demographic support that mirrors the actual population of America, but yet Sanders is cast as the politician of the people. Whether you like it or not, more Americans (and more diverse Americans!) voted for Clinton and seem to think that she would be a better presidential nominee than Sanders. I want the Democratic party to get pushed more to the left but I also want to win the presidency (and more state and local elections, so I hope that all the young Sanders supporters get active in those spheres as well).

     

    Really the final part, I'm so exhausted by the vitriol surrounding the Clinton/Sanders divide that I cannot even feel happy that Clinton is the first woman to get the nomination. I've seen too many people say they are disappointed that it is Clinton who has this honor and not some other, more deserving woman. The problem is, I doubt that there will ever be a woman who actually "deserves" being the first female presidential nominee, because of the gross standards that we hold all women to, especially successful women.

     

    /end

    I agree the vitriol is problematic, but I don't think holding candidates to ideological standards is necessarily a bad thing.I for one am extremely worried that the democratic party is becoming a urban, professional class party and is leaving workers behind. There are very few substantive differences between the GOP and the DNC on economic and foreign policy and that is really troubling.

     

    Obama and Clinton were looking at downsizing Social Security until grassroots activists and the Sander campaign forced change.

    http://www.thenation.com/article/how-expanding-social-security-went-from-economic-fantasy-to-mainstream-talking-point-in-three-short-years/

    Social security is part of the bedrock of the new deal coalition. Similarly there is little support for raising the minimum wage in the upper levels of the DNC.

     

    Hillary has said fracking is something that should be decided by states and localities, hardly a good left position on the environment. 

     

    On foreign policy the debate seems to be how much war and how fully should we support autocratic regimes, not should we be using drones to kill ten civilians for every terrorist while we prop up the corrupt autocratic regimes that drive more people to terrorism.

    I know this election is being called "the most important election ever" but they all get called that and at some point the left needs to take a stand and not let the DNC hold civil rights hostage so we have to vote for candidates that support terrible economic, environmental and foreign policy.

  6. Posted

    I played a bunch of Medieval and Rome (loved them), played very little of Empire (did not like it), and a bit more of Shogun 2 (liked it, I think, but for some reason felt like I was done after one campaign). I get bored with the real time combat after a few battles, and only play the strategic layer of the campaign after that. The problem is, the autoresolve was pretty brutal at least in some of the previous iterations. How is the autoresolve in this one? Is the turn-based strategy part enjoyable in itself or has it been streamlined too much? Is the combat more exciting now?

    Autoresolve seems ok as long as you are not using giant single units, they seem to die pretty fast. I think combat is a lot more exciting with the addition of monster and hero units. Its fun watching powerful units smash into infantry lines or pulling a spell off at a time that turns your fortunes around.

  11. Posted

    I completed the elusive target! Not to happy about how messy it was, but I had to go with plan B:


    I really wanted to snipe him, but there are no good angles on the church yard that I could find. I ended up going into the sewers, killing a ton of guards, piling their bodies in a corner and planting a bomb.

    I then set off the bomb too late and took out another bodyguard instead of the priest. Luckily he was alone so I just emptied a clip into him and ran away.

     

    I also killed the hippy while trying to find a good snipers perch.

     

    #professional

  13. Posted

    I'm at a loss for what to do with either targets. I've gotten to the areas that they're in but I can't see any clear ways to take either of them out in a clean manner. There's so many people to spot you as well that getting to them is already quite a task. This map seems to make less use of its sprawl than Sapienza.

     

    I've only come across one opportunity so far playing with them on minimal.

    for the guy in the embassy I literally just dropped an explosive next to him walked off and detonated it.

    For the general I found some soldiers trash talking him, turned on the PA system so he heard, then went to the room above and kicked a toilet onto his head.

  14. Posted

    Consciously or not, I think it's part of the age-old "geek hierarchy" wherein people are drawn to using "lesser" mediums to conceptualize the less desirable aspects of their own preferred mediums. Art-film enthusiasts complain when an art film is too Hollywood, blockbuster enthusiasts complain when a movie is too video gamey, gaming enthusiasts complain when a video game is too anime, anime enthusiasts complain when an anime is too cartoony, and so on. It's a natural consequence of geek-adjacent communities defining themselves by how their favorite works are different from the rest, but it does lead to instances of accidental elitism all the time, which is too bad.

    Anime is definitely used instead of something like 'over the top'. 

  15. Posted

    Huh

    http://www.androidcentral.com/bjork-teams-htc-bring-worlds-first-vr-album-vive
     

    "Björk is debuting a unique virtual reality exhibition to kickstart the Björk Digital tour. The experience features four music videos set to tracks from last year's Vulnicura album, which will be showcased on the HTC Vive. The exhibition is kicking off this Friday in Sydney, and will head to other cities — including Tokyo, London, Paris, and Houston — in the coming months.

    Attendees to the exhibition will be able to experience the videos through HTC Vive units in a communal viewing room, and the clips will be available for download on the VR headset at a later date. Björk shared a preview on Instagram"

  16. Posted

    As someone with a poorly stocked bar cabinet (currently hosting a single bottle of non-acoholic mulled wine) what are good starting ingredients for cocktails and the like? For reference, I'm way into the darkest of rums and G&T's. Will appreciate the occasional lager. I suspect my cohabitant is more into fruity or sweet drinks... An appletini man if I've ever met one.

    Noteworthy: I've plenty kitchen experience and have access to a garden stocked with fruit, berries and herbs.

    Also noteworthy: I am so poor.

     

    As for those of you mad enough to be swigging malort, maybe try gammeldansk as well! From what I've heard it's like a spiced malort... I've never had malort though, so I can't offer any opinions.

    Get decent bottles of: gin, vodka, whiskey/bourbon and rum. From there simple things like soda water and garnish can be used to make a pretty wide variety of drinks.

  18. Posted

    In my first completion I killed both targets with a battle axe. The game didn't have any reward for that, though.

    I wish more games would take the Crusader Kings 2 method for achievements. Having really hard and silly ones like conquering England as an Indian ruler add a really engaging challenge.

  20. Posted

    The McCoy-Spock dynamic was what the writers were trying to recreate with Pulaski and Data, but it just didn't work as well this time around.  McCoy was cantankerous and grumpy about pretty much everything and Spock acted like a sounding board for him.  Pulaski really only seemed to want to dump on Data, and for things that, as Gormongous said, were largely out of his control.  Spock choose to follow the Vulcan path, Data was forced to.  It paints her as strangely bigoted in contrast to the rest of the crew.

     

    Going back to Lwaxana, I dislike her less now than I did before.  While I admire Majel Barrett's acting in that role, I still find the character irritating enough that I'd rather not watch most of the episodes with her in them.

    Yeah despite McCoy constantly talking about Spocks blood, there was always a sense that he respected him and was just ribbing Spock because he knew Spock wouldn't return fire.

     

    Pulaski comes off as anti-machine and it often seems like she is being cruel to a child.

     

    I love watching Picard and Odo squirm when Lwaxana is around :) Its also so good when she talks to the computer, which she also did the voice for.

  22. Posted

    Figured out why the Chaos campaign is listed as hard. I had just finished clearing out the dwarves in the north and was about to sweep down upon the realms of man when

     

    tzeentch decided to send a level 30 avatar with two full stack armies of the best chaos troops against me. I had two armies of the second level of troops and got absolutely demolished. Maybe I should have tried fleeing all the way to the south of the map. Guess I will start an ork game.

  23. Posted

    How are y'all enjoying your headsets lately? What applications or games do you find yourself enjoying?

    I really like mine but have been too busy to play with it much. Looking forward to checking out Starseed and House of the Dying Sun.

     

    Best game IMO so far is Vanishing Realms. Its an RPG dungeon crawler. The combat just feels so good. I know Space Pirate Trainer is popular, but I haven't had time to test it out.

  24. Posted

    Hey all, new around these forums. I have a gaming-related issue that I could use some help with, and since on the last Idle Thumbs podcast they were encouraging us to use the website more, I thought heck, why not.

     

    So here's my problem: I'm moving to a new appartment soon, and I want to find a way to permanently connect my pc to my tv, in order to easily game, watch movies, or surf the web, as if I were working off my monitor. The pc and the tv will only be about 5 metres away, but having a wire going from one to the other would be very inconvenient. Pathing the wire inside the wall or under the floor is not an option unfortunately. Even if I try to hug a wall with a wire, I'd have to go past a door, which is very inconvenient.

     

    Therefore, I've been looking at possible solutions. The first one that came to mind was using a wireless HDMI connection. However, I've never tried these. I live in Argentina, and have family travelling to the US soon, so I can have them get it for me there. Unfortunately, once it's purchased, there's no going back, so I want to make sure it fits my needs. So, has anyone tried wireless HDMI for gaming? How bad is the lag over short distances like mine (no walls in between btw)?

     

    Also, any other suggestions you guys might have? I've been told about the Steam Link, but how does that work with non-steam games? Or what if I want to watch a movie I have downloaded on my pc, or browse the internet with a mouse and keyboard, like I would be able to do with an HDMI connection?

     

    Anyway, all ideas are welcome.  :)

     

    could you run the cable over the door? It adds to the length needed but I had to do something similar with an ethernet cable at one point.