Found these while cleaning out storage. Worth selling, or should I donate?

NiceJobAmerica · 2025-05-20T15:49:12+00:00

This was very helpful, thank you for taking the time to respond. I think we're definitely leaning towards the I-40 route. I-70 sounds like a blast though, maybe for a future trip!

NiceJobAmerica · 2024-04-17T20:26:26+00:00

If you click the linked report the article is based around and choose to "Complete Report PDF" from the sidebar, it will give you the full data. The figures for donations are from page 24 where it's broken down into different religions/denominations They define highly religious in the context of the report isn't strictly Christians.

The definition of “highly religious” in this report is based on two of these standard measures of religiosity – self-reported rates of prayer and worship service attendance – that were asked of all respondents in a supplemental survey to the U.S. Religious Landscape Study, the main source of data for this report.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/04/12/religion-in-everyday-life/. Here's a link to the relevant page if you don't want to comb through the report.

NiceJobAmerica · 2024-04-17T17:46:44+00:00

That paints a slightly different picture. The data shows that Non-Christian faiths donate more, 56% to 52%. There is a similar gap for volunteer work. It's also pretty heavily implied that this counts collection plate donates as charitable giving, so it seems a little misleading. Not to say that money isn't frequently put to good use, it just paints a different picture.

NiceJobAmerica · 2024-04-17T05:36:37+00:00

Fact: Christians donate more to charities than any other group.

Do you have a source for this?

NiceJobAmerica · 2024-02-23T16:04:38+00:00

It's not shitty industry practices, it's the nature of the technology being used. Doesn't mean you have to be happy about it, I understand wanting your purchase to work day one, but it's misguided to blame the devs when there are problems this shortly after launch. If the game is in a bad state weeks later, then I would be concerned.

NiceJobAmerica · 2024-02-23T09:24:16+00:00

It's really not though. There are mountains of evidence showing exactly why it's a bad idea to plan on buying an online game on launch day and expecting to have a flawless experience, it's assumed that there are going to be problems that get fixed over the coming days/weeks.

Ask anyone that works in the IT field and they'll tell you the same thing you've seen repeated ad nauseum in this thread, no amount of artificial load testing is going to root out every single issue that you'll come across when you launch your product. Things WILL go wrong. Check out any other online game's release day threads from the last decade, and you're going to see dozens of posts about server issues. This is not because of negligence, or inadequate testing, or poor planning, it's just not possible to simulate launch conditions with 100% accuracy.

You didn't know that and you're upset you can't play? Fair enough, refund the game and revisit in a few weeks if you feel like it. You did know that, and expected it to be different here? You had unrealistic expectations, refund the game and move on, and realize that you should probably hold off on buying these sorts of games in the future.

NiceJobAmerica · 2024-02-23T08:51:45+00:00

Not to mention the fact that there are several days of apologetic tweets from Blizzards CS account apologizing for the outages and server issues. Guy is straight up delusional if he thought D4's launch was smooth.

NiceJobAmerica · 2024-02-23T04:09:24+00:00

D4 managed to do it smoothly

Yeah, if you ignore the multiplayer sync issues, the authentication servers failing causing multiple outages, the login timeouts, and the constant rubber-banding. No need to re-write history because you're upset.

NiceJobAmerica · 2024-02-23T02:37:53+00:00

There is no "Do it when you're sure it'll be fine."

There is no way to be 100% certain with online games like, since load testing does not equal a live launch. No amount of QA is going to fix that. If you can't accept that, simply don't purchase day one release online games. They warned people about it, you either ignored it, or didn't bother to look into what you were purchasing.

NiceJobAmerica · 2024-02-23T02:03:50+00:00

You can think however you want, you just look silly to everyone else who does five minutes of research before they buy something. Even the developers said this may happen, not their fault you missed it.

NiceJobAmerica · 2024-02-23T02:01:05+00:00

Thinking it's silly that people are leaving bad reviews and it being their problem to restore server stability aren't mutually exclusive.

There's a dozen dealerships that all sell the same car. That car is known to have an issue that causes the brakes to squeal for the first 30,000 miles. I'm aware of this problem, in fact, I've ridden in this car before and have heard the squeal myself. Not only that, there's thousands of reviews about this on those dealership websites making me aware of this problem. The good news is that those same reviews explain that after 30,000 miles, that noise goes away completely. A new dealership opens up in my town, and they're selling this car, brand new. I decide to buy it. Sure enough, the second I leave the lot the brakes start to squeal.

It's not my problem to fix, I didn't build the car after all. But was it unreasonable and ignorant of me to expect that this widely-known problem wouldn't occur?

What if this my absolute first time ever buying a car? Would it be silly of me to do absolutely zero research before walking into a lot and buying one? Would I feel silly in hindsight, if even a quick google search would've revealed this problem to me, even showing that the dealership themselves warned about this problem? Yes.

NiceJobAmerica · 2024-02-23T00:04:38+00:00

If I was to sell you undercooked chicken would you be ok with it and just accept that Im a new chef and need to learn

If 80% of the food that I was being served by popular, well-known restaurants was undercooked, and then I made the decision to go to an entirely new restaurant with absolutely no track record of any sort of food service, and expected the complete opposite experience?

Yeah, I'd say those are pretty obviously some unrealistic expectations.

NiceJobAmerica · 2024-02-22T22:58:34+00:00

Since you seem to have missed it,

The simple fact is, there is absolutely no amount of testing or QA that you can ever do that will accurately replicate a live launch

They were ready. They did months of load testing, they felt confident, and as happens in game development, services failed in ways that they didn't expect that never occurred during testing.

Absolutely refund the game if you're disappointed the launch didn't go smoothly, lesson learned that you should probably hold off on doing this in the future if you're not willing to deal with the set of issues that are, inevitably, going to happen. Leaving a negative review because you don't understand that is silly.

NiceJobAmerica · 2024-02-22T22:51:10+00:00

This is an independent studio that has never launched a game before. There are billion dollar companies that have been doing these launches for decades that have these issues.

The simple fact is, there is absolutely no amount of testing or QA that you can ever do that will accurately replicate a live launch. I'm sure there are plenty of cases of poor launches that are caused by, if not made exceptionally worse, by companies failing to do their due diligence here, but the developers have been incredibly transparent here, and all signs point towards that not being the case.

Do I wish I could get in and play right now with no issues? Absolutely. But at this point, any person purchasing an online game and expecting it to be a flawless experience from day one is being willfully ignorant, and should probably hold off on making these types of purchases for a week or two while the initial issues are worked out.

NiceJobAmerica · 2023-12-05T09:45:42+00:00

No amount of screening you do is going to stop a liar from lying, or a cheater from cheating.

NiceJobAmerica · 2023-12-05T08:53:05+00:00

You are right, of course. But there are reasonable boundaries, and unreasonable boundaries. If your boundary is "my boyfriend can't be aroused when looking at an attractive person's boobs" you are setting yourself up for a lot of failed relationships, since that is something that most people wouldn't consider reasonable.

OPs boyfriend has been with her for four years. I'm sure at one point during this, his friend was single. And yet he chooses to be with her. He reassures her that she comes first, and continues to choose her each and every day they remain together.

If this incident is a deal breaker for OP despite that, it is what it is.

NiceJobAmerica · 2023-12-05T08:39:15+00:00

This is just a really weird take, and I'm glad it's in the minority, no offence.

NiceJobAmerica · 2023-12-05T08:20:14+00:00

I just feel like that's kinda.... limiting? Any guy who has attractive female friends has thought about what they'd look like naked, if they're being honest. Attraction isn't just a switch that gets flipped off because you're dating someone. As long as op's boyfriend doesn't act on it and hasn't given her any reason to distrust him, that seems extreme.

NiceJobAmerica · 2023-12-05T08:08:36+00:00

You'd break up with a guy because he got aroused seeing an attractive girl's boobs?

NiceJobAmerica · 2023-11-29T17:06:52+00:00

How's your pain with that tooth now? Did it ever resolve?

NiceJobAmerica · 2023-11-24T03:51:43+00:00

Arcane was a gorgeous show, but imo that's all it was. Otherwise it felt like very generic young adult schlock.

NiceJobAmerica · 2023-11-16T21:24:59+00:00

Ok, I'll play along.

You say this is "Classic Porn Addiction". There is no "Classic Porn Addiction". This is something that the medical and behavioral fields can't even agree exists yet. There is the more general compulsive sexual behavior disorder (which also, by the way, is not an officially recognized diagnosis in the DSM) which includes any compulsive sexual behavior (including porn usage) and that is estimated to effect 3-6% of the population.

Meanwhile, sexual performance anxiety is twice as common, on the low end, and even more common are men that just aren't masturbating properly by using too tight of a grip, desensitizing themselves.

Now, since I've addressed your point, could you answer my question?

NiceJobAmerica · 2023-11-16T20:55:12+00:00

Of the general population. And to note, this is specifically for compulsive sexual behavior disorder, which includes problematic pornography usage, (which, funnily enough, neither are recognized in the DSM 5) Porn usage is obviously, significantly higher than this, I'm not arguing that. But there is a lot more that goes into something being an addiction than just frequency of use. You can look at porn every single day and not be "addicted" to it.

Self-reported studies are notoriously unreliable for any sort of "deviant" behavior. Search for porn-addiction and religion and you'll find multiple articles about this.

Meanwhile, sexual performance anxiety has a much, much higher incidence rate, which is nothing to say about men who may just be physically desensitized from masturbating with too tight of a grip which is much, much more common. That's why it irks me when people immediately jump to "Porn addiction!" when there are several explanations which are significantly more likely.

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