Vader

Hey just a note: Sanders plugs should be moved to a new thread (suggested title: "feel the bern"). This one is about Trump, so unless you are talking about Sanders in relation to Trump I don't know if it belongs here.

Honestly, if we were to judge politicians by the faux-viral content their supporters generate, I don't think anyone would be electable. I don't think I need to cite examples here of Bernie supporters being terrible (there are many), despite Sanders being probably the most upstanding individual currently running. I mostly support Clinton for realpolitik reasons, but I think Sanders has shown the most integrity overall. Sadly, integrity can rarely speak for electability and capacity for successful governance.

Twilight Princess was maybe the most notorious Zelda game for making us go through an endless array of bullshit before getting to the good stuff. It's still fucking Zelda, though.

On a policy level, Cruz is just as bad if not worse. He personally scares me a little less because his rhetoric, while bigoted, is significantly less racist than Trump's. While he is extraordinarily arrogant, I don't think he would defy the military by ordering forms of combat engagements too cavemanish for them to take seriously. I think Rubio would be a slightly more conservative Bush II. In other words, terrible, but a bastion of tolerance compared to his colleagues. I honestly think a Rubio nomination is the best we can really hope for, and I say that with a full understanding of how profoundly conservative he is.

God, I so want HD Twilight Princess, but I'm still short a Mario Maker do to the $60 price point :-( Nintendo games are so expensive for me.

God, this is what terrifies me too. I can't conceive of any way he wins the general election, but I've been wrong about his ceiling up until this point. I'd assumed I'd be a writing a postmortem for him by November of last year at the latest, and look where we are now.

Dean Erickson portrays Gabe in the only FMV installment of Sierra's Gabriel Knight series. Jake is right that he totally looks like FMV game man, but he actually gives a decent performance.

Maybe Trump's voice triggers ASMR for his supporters

Anyone play the new Walking Dead miniseries from Telltale? My wife and I just finished the first episode tonight. I've heard some complaints from people who said that they didn't like playing as Michonne, who is already a prominent character in both the comics and TV series. This didn't really impact my enjoyment of the game, as I have neither read the comics nor watched any of the TV show. I will say I really liked the character design on both Michonne and her friend Pete. They both look gorgeous, and telltale continues to do a good job of animating faces that are expressive but still stylized enough not to enter uncanny valley. I also thought the dialogue trees were well handled. The choices available struck the right balance for me between giving me some agency in how I roleplayed Michonne, while also injecting her own jaded personality into every line. Some of this comes from excellent voice acting by Samira Wiley (probably best known for her role as Poussey in Orange is the New Black). Without giving too much away, there is one encounter I found especially effective where survival seemed to depend on choosing dialogue options to piece together a story that seemed most believable, rather than the suspicious sounding "truth." Almost none of the "gamey" aspects have changed. Still point and click mechanics and QTEs, though they weirdly seemed to have decided to up the difficulty on these. I know a lot of people probably have "zombie fatigue" and maybe feel like Walking Dead stuff has run its course, but if you enjoyed the first two season from telltale I really do think Michonne is worth checking out.

Well, if you (or anyone else) gets around to playing it, I'd be curious to swap moral dilemmas ^__^

"Terrifying and surreal" are the perfect adjectives. He really must be stopped.

Glad that we seem to have worked through this. Not sure if Zeus was referring to me in their comment about people being snarky and condescending, but if so I am sorry if I came across that way. I try to value the experience everyone brings to the table, even if I strongly disagree. Anyways, wow. So... Postmates

Nothing to do with differences of opinion, this just has gotten extraordinary personal in a way that is unhealthy.

Seconded

Sorry I know I am posting a lot, but I feel like challenging people on their personal situations is not a great direction for this thread to go? Can we please either agree to not go ad hominem or just lock this one up, as sad as that would be?

No you're not. This has just gotten remarkably personal in a way that is sort of upsetting.

I'm sorry if we've struck a nerve, but this is a pretty bold assumption. Do you actually know where all of us are coming from, or is there some baggage you are bringing in here?

Yes, I certainly agree. Unfortunately, this does seem to be the view of a lot of people and as hard as I work to change that, I realize that it's a lot easier for some people to not have to deal with the notion that we might not live in a meritocracy. I can't blame them because it's sort of a terrifying thing, actually.

You have definitely made your point clear, and it is not so much that I don't understand but simply that I disagree. My message, clearly laid out in the title of this thread, doesn't change. I think others can read what we have already said along with other sources and experiences and decide for themselves at this point.

Those sound like good places to start

Oof, this is really painful for me to hear, but I think we're at a bit of an impasse because there are some core assumptions we seem to disagree on. One is that anyone paid less than minimum wage because of tips could leave and get a better job easily anytime. This, I believe, is categorically false. The second is the assumption that refusing to tip will put any onus on the companies to pay more. If they cared about their workers, they would be paying them more to begin with. As well intentioned as such a boycott might be, I believe it would also be wrong. It would help no one and only hurts those most economically vulnerable. There are better ways to advocate for higher wages than refusing to give workers the only possible sufficient means of income they have. I doubt many in these difficult situations would appreciate your activism. For those who hold these two assumptions, I think I have said all I can to refute them and if I tried to refute them further I fear I would only be repeating myself. Your minds are made up, and so is mine. I simply hope that people will read this conversation and come to the conclusion that the just and compassionate thing is to tip, AND advocate for a better payment structure. That is all I ask. For those who live in countries that have this better figured out than we do State side, difficult as it may be please appreciate that when you live in a shitty system, doing the right thing means descending into the muck a bit. To simply not engage is to let the sewage fester.

This is where we part ways. I don't believe that you are giving the money to Postmates or Favor when you tip, you are giving it to the employee. If tips were free money for the company, they would make the tipping process far more intuitive and do more to actively encourage tips. Yeah I guess it's possible that if people unanimously boycotted tips maybe the government would raise the minimum wage for tipped workers (though probably unlikely so long as congress is chronically deadlocked), but how many people are you willing to hurt in the process while providing absolutely no real consequence to the abusive corporate practices? Just please don't be a Buscemi

Sadly, Breedon is not involved to my knowledge.

On this point we are in vigorous agreement. The only stand I am taking here is one that asks everyone to pay the people who do things for them. I fully acknowledge that the payout structure of most companies is severely unfair, but refusing the tip doesn't change that and only hurts the people whose lives quite literally depend on them.

I think what the bleeding hearts here are saying is that we want unskilled jobs to be less shitty and we want fewer people to have to live in bad financial conditions. To that end, the only thing I am saying is compensate the people who bring you food. I realize tipping isn't the best possible system for compensation, but it's a complicated world. People who live on tips shouldn't suffer for any ideological stance I might have against the mode of compensation they rely upon.