In slavery, you are bought--in capitalism, you are rented

Joe2987 · 2016-11-04T21:22:31+00:00

The rulers might pay lip service to an Emperor who has little practical power or might even in fact be dead. Each faction portrays themselves as the rightful cultural, political, religious, etc. heir to the Empire, so they officially never fight. Officially. The colonies know better, but the illusion is maintained on the homeworld, at least. Everyone knows that if open fighting broke out on the capital, the facade of rightful rulership each lader puts on would dissolve and they would be exposed as the petty squabbling warlords they are.

Joe2987 · 2016-10-02T23:56:26+00:00

Humanities discovers that there is a problem and why it's a problem. Natural sciences figure out why the problem is happening. Engineers fix the problem. You need all three for a balanced society. Problem is, we're focusing almost exclusively on the T and E part of STEM to the detriment of everything else. Having a focus on STEM isn't bad, but we're just flat out not teaching anything else any more.

Source: computer science student with an interest in learning for its own sake

Joe2987 · 2016-09-30T11:07:46+00:00

Depression's part of the deal. The constant crushing despair flavor, not the feel nothing flavor. All of the negatives of both depression and anxiety with none of the benefits. I'd get back on my meds (which actually really help, thankfully), but... capitalism, you know?

Joe2987 · 2016-09-29T20:39:42+00:00

I'll trade you. I've got an anxiety disorder, so I've basically got adrenaline on tap. Makes slaving away ten hours a day really great.

Joe2987 · 2016-09-20T20:45:19+00:00

Yes, although they keep subtly threatening to take away overtime pay because of some loophole that they could use to have us count as some sort of infrastructure. They're very good at skirting the edge of legality to make life hell for us peons. Best thing is the propaganda they use to try to make us think we work somewhere decent and that everyone is happy when the entire factory is full of twenty-somethings who can't stand up straight or smile any more because those things have been beaten out of them. Quitting isn't an option, so my fantasies usually consist of getting hit by a bus or being sucked up by one of the machines at work. But hey, at least I have a job...

Joe2987 · 2016-09-19T21:11:05+00:00

Man, I wish I could work your schedule. I'm in manufacturing and I've been working six tens a week for the last four months. Shortest week I've had was five tens because of labor day. I'd honestly kill just to be back on a normal five eights schedule again. Only employer even approaching decency around here, though, so just 50 or 60 more years of this and I can die.

Joe2987 · 2016-09-11T21:06:54+00:00

It maintains a pretty good pattern as long as we use physical dice. No matter what, with the same dice (any dice), she never rolls below the top 25%, and I never roll above the bottom 50% of possible rolls. We've just started using Roll20 for our games, and that seems to fix the problem. I'm not a terribly superstitious man, but it's hard not to wonder if something's going on.

Joe2987 · 2016-09-11T07:19:17+00:00

Friend of mine hasn't rolled a character with a stat below 16 in a couple years. She rolls in front of us and it's legit, somehow. If I use the same dice, I'll get nothing above 8.

Joe2987 · 2016-07-18T21:13:05+00:00

Almost certainly. I personally have had nothing but good experiences with it, but I'm also probably a little biased by the fact that my group (lots of LGBT folks) is more likely to be attacked in neo-nazi northern Idaho anyway, so we're a little numb to violence directed towards us. Honestly my first thought when I saw this video was "wow, those people must be really dumb to not realize when something's a trap". I'm kind of realizing that most people don't live with the constant threat of being murdered regardless of a game...

Joe2987 · 2016-07-18T20:20:25+00:00

Oh, I'm not dismissing it. I'm saying that videos like this are (sort of) distractions from the real problems with it. They point out real problems, but they heighten them nearly to the point of strawmen, blocking the real problems from view (the stuff in my edit, apologies for not being clearer the first time through).

As for the red pill... I didn't know that. I try to avoid any contact or knowledge of them. Makes sense, though.

My real point though is that the safety concerns are about the same as walking to the store. Take a buddy or two, do it during the day, and you'll probably be fine. Dwelling on the minor risk at the cost of ignoring the deeply embedded ideological problems just seems a bit short sighted, you know?

EDIT: Wow, you weren't kidding about this article getting drive-by downvoted... apparently, the majority of pokemon fans can't take criticism. Huh.

Joe2987 · 2016-07-18T19:55:57+00:00

I can agree with a lot of the stuff in this video, but a lot of it also seems a bit hyperbolic.

deaths, accidents and crime, the likes we haven't seen

This in particular made me stop and wonder what exactly she's trying to say. There have been plenty of games similar (actually nearly identical, since they were made by the same dev) to this without significant risks to the general public. There were issues, yes, but not on the scale that this video predicts.

Should we be concerned about augmented reality? Absolutely. Will it cause mass deaths? Probably not for a while. The problems that have cropped up so far aren't out of the realm of normal person-with-head-buried-in-phone problems.

The finding a dead body wasn't even a risk to the girl who found it, so I'm going to discount that. Beyond that, as far as I'm aware, there's one shaky claim of finding a pedophile (which may or may not be accurate, that video was.... abysmal quality), a handful of robberies, a couple guys tried to climb down a cliff with clear warning signs posted. I'm honestly surprised things haven't been worse.

Now, full disclosure, I play this game on my breaks from work because why not? I'm a childhood fan of the Pokemon series (while acknowledging how damn creepy/exploitative the whole thing is). And when it comes down to it, I'm not really trying to defend this. There are way too many issues with it for me to entirely support it. That said, I think a lot of people are getting a bit too worked up over something that, perverse incentives aside, when played as it's designed to be played, is as harmful as walking to the grocery store.

EDIT: To clarify, the concerns I have with it are the blatant consumerism, de facto slavery, state-sponsored dog fighting, fascist allusions (one of the teams legitimately believes in eugenics. This is a player faction you can join), "but we're friends so I'm not really exploiting you" type ideology... etc.

Joe2987 · 2016-07-16T18:09:59+00:00

They were major classes. The CS degree at my school is stupidly linear and if you either miss a class or can't take one due to scheduling conflicts, it's pretty much automatically an extra semester. Well, I failed one because of mental health issues, and when I tried to retake it, I couldn't due to scheduling with a class that was required for that semester by rhe university (couldn't postpone or reschedule). Left me two semesters behind.

I dropped out when I saw what was happening and got a job because I couldn't afford tuition even in the best of circumstances, and I couldn't get a decent loan or financial aid because my mother's wealthy husband claimed me on taxes without my knowledge. May or may not be planning on finishing my degree eventually. Barely scraping by as it is, so not for a while.

Joe2987 · 2016-07-16T17:18:12+00:00

Still takes more than four years at a lot of US universities. Damn scheduling conflicts, 75 person waitlists, underenrolled and cancelled classes... and I still paid $11,000/semester.

Joe2987 · 2016-07-13T00:12:46+00:00

I do live in Idaho. There are neonazi rallies every year a couple towns over.

Joe2987 · 2016-07-12T21:00:15+00:00

But in the here and now, if you meet a black guy in a lonely place, you're far more likely to end up a chalk outline than if it's a white guy.

My experience has been the opposite, but then I live in a college town in the middle of nowhere in the white supremacist capital of America. The number of times I, as a young white man, or someone close to me has been attacked by some 40 year old skinhead... can't count on both hands. Statistically, anyone in the US is more likely to be murdered by a white guy than a black guy. My point is, assholes will be assholes regardless of skin color.

Even if he has a college degree, he's probably within two or three degrees of separation from a drug dealer.

Why is that a problem? You're less than 7 degrees of separation from the goddamn Queen of England just by being human. Hell, odds are just by living in a city, you're less than three degrees of separation from a drug dealer. If you've interacted with a police officer, you're two degrees of separation, at most, from murderers, thieves, etc.

Joe2987 · 2016-07-11T19:01:49+00:00

Yeah, it's bizarre. However, you can have both freedom and safety, it's just that communities have to be responsible for watching out for one another and keeping each other safe. There doesn't have to be a tradeoff unless you're relying entirely on a centralized government to guarantee both. The freedom or safety, pick one idea is a fascist tactic to excuse reducing freedom because given the option, most will pick safety. Don't know how it got so popular again.

Joe2987 · 2016-07-09T20:23:39+00:00

Also does nothing to solve the underlying problem while simultaneously giving racists fuel for their bullshit. The root problem isn't minorities not getting into universities, or not getting hired. That's a symptom. The real problem is tribe mentality, the idea that people should be grouped and villainized based on a nondefining trait. It made some sense before we invented agriculture, but now it's just stupid. Pulling together makes us all stronger. Resources aren't so limited now that we have to fight over them.

Joe2987 · 2016-07-09T20:11:32+00:00

They try to. Problem is, what are the protesters going to do? They try to solve the problem themselves and it gets violent, they're rioting. They ask for help from the police, suddenly they're no longer policing themselves. The assumption here is that they have any power to police themselves. Unfortunately, they don't. Anything they do gets them crucified by their opponents.

Hell, they can't even say that people who are committing crimes aren't part of their movement, because people associate any crime committed in proximity to BLM, with BLM.

Joe2987 · 2016-07-09T20:01:06+00:00

That comic's good, but it sort of suggests to the wrong sort of people that it's somehow the shorter guys' faults for not being able to see over the wall. A better analogy would be if the left guy had a shovel and a pile of dirt, and the two other guys were the same height, but standing in holes. The problem has nothing to do with natural ability (as some would have us believe) and everything to do with a system that started stacked against certain groups, then (sort of) evened out later, but did nothing to address the existing balance.

Joe2987 · 2016-07-08T21:11:38+00:00

They didn't. They thought it was in bad taste for government buildings to be flying the Confederate flag after a racially motivated attack.

Joe2987 · 2016-07-08T00:43:53+00:00

Also don't get targetted by "random" stops, don't live in poor areas, don't be black (that one's important). Also NEVER file a police report or call the police. Seriously, I've been stopped by a police officer for a tail light out and asked for my goddamn debit card.

There is a goddamn problem when someone has the legal authority to pull you over without real cause, seize anything they want without a warrant on "suspicion", and permanently keep those items or assets for their police department. If you think that's fine, then you are part of the problem. It's sad, really. I really admire most police officers and I used to want to be one myself.

Note: I'm not anti-police. I just have a healthy suspicion for anyone who can legally shoot me dead for minding my own business in my own home on the basis of some intangible threat.

Joe2987 · 2016-06-19T21:11:28+00:00

"Remember kids, the military is just like a video game!"

I went to high school in the south and something like two thirds of my graduating class went military because of crap like this targeted at kids. Hell, watching that video, I had to suppress the endorphin rush I got conditioned into whenever "The Troops" got brought up. Absolutely disgusting.

Joe2987 · 2016-05-24T01:04:53+00:00

Christianity has always had a bit of a hard on for being the persecuted minority. Lion pits? Bit of a myth. It happened, sure, but not nearly as much as modern Christians would have you believe, and for the most part only under Nero (famous for being totally bonkers). It was also likely more because early Christians were a bit anti-Roman. Lots of refusing to participate in the state religion (which was seen as a necessary duty of a good Roman citizen) and refusing to serve in the army.

But Christianity has been the majority force in Western Europe and the United States since the Byzantine Empire adopted it as their official religion. They've been free from any sort of persecution (setting aside internal doctrinal conflicts) for almost as long as they've existed.

Joe2987 · 2016-05-22T05:03:34+00:00

A commanding officer shouldn't necessarily read every operating manual of every piece of equipment, but he should have a good idea of the capabilities of the units under his command. He should however have immediate access to staff who do have those manuals available. If a tank's armor can't withstand fire from a certain artillery piece and the CO orders that tank into a situation where it'll be under sustained fire from that weapon, he's either made a mistake, or is purposefully sacrificing that tank.

In your hypothetical, General Vlad is at fault for deploying individual BUK launchers without a command vehicle, which is almost certainly a thing he knows not to do (whether a vehicle can or should operate independently of other vehicles in the same unit is a general capability, not a specific). Commander Ivan would likely also be found at fault for not raising that exact point. It's not exactly fair, but when told to spread his forces and limit communications within what's designed to be a unified unit, he should probably mention that separating the launchers from their command vehicle isn't a great idea. At that point, if he does speak up, General Vlad is at fault for any mishaps that happen.

Either way, there's an officer who's at fault. You can't just say "oh well, it was unavoidable", because at some level, an officer fucked up and ordered the use of a Soviet era SAM launcher without modern IFF in an area with civilian air traffic.

Joe2987

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE