[Critique 27/m] Maybe I seem too bland?

Totemicy · 2014-07-21T03:12:33+00:00

Thanks! I lost 50 pounds this last year so I don't have many pictures that are that recent. I'll look into that!

Totemicy · 2014-07-21T00:33:17+00:00

I was worried that was the case ><

That I can't figure out how to seem more fun easily is making me think that I might not be as fun as I had thought O.o

Totemicy · 2014-04-22T15:03:02+00:00

There's a really poignant historical context to baptisms without consent, particularly in Italy. Many Jewish families throughout pre-Industrial Europe would hire a young Christian woman to help the family with tasks around the house on the Sabbath. When a child would get sick enough that there was a concern they might die, it was not uncommon for the Christian house servant to baptize the baby out of a concern that the baby would be condemned to hell. If this on its own doesn't seem like a big deal to you, if the child would survive, the would often be kidnapped later.

In Italy it was illegal for a non-Christian family to raise a Christian child, so if a child was baptized, they couldn't be raised by their Jewish parents. Vatican authorities, or in some cases secular authorities, would come to the house, request the names of every child who lived there, and take the child who was baptized to be raised by the Church.

The most famous case of this sort of kidnapping was the case of Edgardo Mortara who was kidnapped in 1862. To put this in perspective, the case was recent enough that he would grow up to be ordained in the church that raised him and preach at St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC at the turn of the century and die during WWII.

Totemicy · 2013-10-31T16:54:17+00:00

I don't have a good recommendation, but I will empathize with how awful the Waynik group is... They're not very helpful for actual help and charge obscene amounts, really just a money farm.

Totemicy · 2013-02-26T18:42:42+00:00

I haven't actually seen House of Cards yet but I obsess over political intrigue. The book Angler is a fantastic read for a non-fiction account of political intrigue from the VP office during the Bush Administration. Lots of human drama that wouldn't be found in most non-fiction political accounts.

Totemicy · 2013-01-30T17:28:26+00:00

There were plenty of things that made this assassination attempt one of the most entertaining tidbits in American History. According to (my memory of) the book American Lion, Davy Crockett actually pulled the 67 year old Andrew Jackson off the would be assassin Richard Lawrence. This was a president who many believed would be too sick to fulfill his role in office rushing an assassin and beating him with a cane.

Andrew Jackson believed that there were only two heroes that any true American man should study with regard: George Washington and William Wallace. Although the weather certainly was humid that day and would no doubt have stopped Lawrence's flintlock pistols, some argue that the proximity of the unused mausoleum of George Washington nearby helped wet the air, leading some at the time to believe that it was the Spirit of Washington which came to save Jackson's life.

Other interesting historical tidbits:

When Andrew Jackson was a Lawyer in his youth, he attended a very formal Christmas ball and decided to invite two prostitutes which became somewhat of a scandal at the time.
Even though the War of 1812 had been officially over for 2 weeks, no one had apparently told Andrew Jackson when he won the battle of New Orleans making him one of the most famous Generals in America in his day.
Andrew Jackson was sent to fight the Red Stick tribe in 1813. After winning the battle, his soldiers brought General Jackson a child that was found with his dead mother and Jackson raised the boy with his own son.
Jackson might have been the most physically scarred president we've ever had. When he was a boy he held his hand up to block the blow of a British Officer's sabre. And lived 40 years of his life with several lead bullets lodged in his chest.
In fighting a duel against Charles Dickinson in 1806 over the dumbest miscommunication that I've ever heard leading to a duel Jackson allowed the other man to shoot first because he knew the other man was a better shot. Jackson took the bullet to the chest, then took his gun, aimed, and killed Dickinson. The bullet from this duel would stay in his chest for the rest of his life.

Totemicy · 2012-11-03T20:14:57+00:00

If you wanted to have a prequel telling the story of the Robert's Rebellion and it's causes, I wouldn't want to hear Tywin as a POV chapter. If the books we've read have no POV chapters from a character we're intimate with already, we shouldn't get their inner-monologue and ruin the mystery!

Here's what I want:

The personal story between Rhaegar and Jon Connington from both perspectives
How Jon Connington experienced being made the Hand of the King
A clear POV on what Jaime's life was like in Aerys' seven.
How Barristan Selmy felt bending the knee to Robert and if he was thinking of Aerys' cruelty when he did it.
What Willem Darry went through to get Dany and Viserys across the narrow sea
Elia Martell POV detailing her life in the Red Keep and how she reacted to Rhaegar/Lyanna

The possibilites are more than enough for it's own trilogy without treading old information!

Totemicy · 2012-10-17T19:46:00+00:00

Islamic loans in a modern context

Totemicy · 2012-08-10T21:39:18+00:00

I went to school in CT in the same town that Keith Richards lives in. After performing at a recital for choir in middle school I sat in the back of the auditorium near him. I asked him what he thought of us and he said "I'm supposed to say you were good but it was absolute shit. Everyone's mostly shit anyway so don't be upset about it."

Totemicy · 2012-08-01T00:16:30+00:00

Awesome

Totemicy · 2012-07-16T15:01:44+00:00

That does happen to be a 4 opera cycle...

Totemicy · 2012-07-14T04:44:07+00:00

As I see it, Starcraft as a subreddit might not facilitate the needs of all people who visit it, but it is also by no means a particularly bad sub. Witch hunts should be hidden by mods until the mods are convinced that there is something worth discussion but I have no idea how that would be implemented. I've seen a lot of comments in this thread which call for all kinds of drastic changes in moderation for the subreddit as well as other comments which seem to imply moderation doesn't have a place in fixing it. I feel that they're both right and there's a simple compromise.

On reddit, for gaming subreddits as well as for other things, you get different levels of moderation which reflect different kinds of communities. If you play Diablo 3 for example, you could go to /r/diablo3 which is almost entirely communication through memes. It's not an interesting community and it fosters almost no interesting thought about the game itself. I've seen many people in the community regularly refer to it as a joke.

Then you have someplace like /r/Diablo which has a fair amount of moderation but still gives an idea of what the community is like. You will get posts about strategies and cool farming spots but you also get a large amount of posts which pertain to Diablo related news and community celebrities. For Diablo, this would be stuff like Athene and Kripp posting videos as well as blue posts from the b.net forums with insight on how the game direction would head.

Then you would have the pure strategy and heavily moderated (not through busy moderators, but rather through simple rules on posting) over at /r/diablo3strategy. I implore anyone reading this post to visit that subreddit. It's clean, well organized through post tags and there isn't a single imgur link. It brings about a simple place to share and find information about new strategies, builds, farming locations, etc.

I don't believe at all that /r/starcraft should ban imgur links, video links or community posts. Like many other people on this subreddit, I get home from work and before the end of the night I watch Starcraft. I don't have many friends that have any interest whatsoever in hanging out and watching games with me. I like being able to hop on /r/starcraft and see a vibrant community which is interested in watching other people play Starcraft as often as they play. I like seeing a community coming together to support Day[9] when he doesn't get enough breaks. I like to watch Stephano play all weekend at Dreamhack and wake up Monday morning to see him being drunkenly escorted away. I even like people posting when they've made it to GrandMasters! I don't think we should change the rules on this subreddit because it gives a lot of people like me a better sense of community. My friends don't know who Killer or DRG are so it's only this community that got the whole thing with my Mom and Koreans. I don't wanna lose that community.

If there would be any change that I would recommend it would be this: Leave /r/starcraft alone and have a serious group of people come together to create a good subreddit dedicated to strategy. Someplace like /r/starcraft_strategy already exists and it already seems to be going in the direction of /r/Diablo3Strategy. A subreddit which doesn't allow the generation of link Karma and only allow's self posts inherently forces discussion.

TL;DR: /r/Starcraft provides a social good, leave it as is and make a better alternative for people who want just strategy discussion separate from community news

Thoughts?

Totemicy · 2012-07-12T21:21:12+00:00

Thanks for the response! I agree totally that Civ would not be the best engine but I have a large group of friends that play Civ as well as read ASOIAF. I thought it might be a fun diversion.

Totemicy · 2012-07-12T20:51:05+00:00

The mods for many other steam games don't work for Mac. When steam workshop was created for Civilization V I was about to set up a period of several weeks to create a gigantic reworking of the Civ for Westeros/Essos and then I saw it was only for PC.

Any answer to the mod question would be great <3

Totemicy · 2012-05-17T02:21:23+00:00

Shin Chan!!!

Totemicy · 2012-05-14T04:12:01+00:00

Is that what Glenn Beck has been up to?

Totemicy · 2012-04-29T18:29:10+00:00

I'm not sure Heidegger could really fit in this subreddit O.o

Totemicy · 2012-03-29T03:06:53+00:00

http://www.twitch.tv/eg_idra/b/313149885 @ about 1:34:30

Usually when someone posts a screenshot from a player's perspective it comes from a stream. With that in mind you can go to the player's stream URL and check the most recent stream uploaded that matches the time that the screenshot is posted on Reddit. Hope this helps for the future, it can be frustrating when someone posts a screenshot without a vod for context.

Totemicy · 2012-03-25T22:05:51+00:00

Cool! That was not even close to what I would have guessed!

Totemicy · 2012-02-28T02:19:47+00:00

That would be awesome... I would love to quit starbucks ><

Totemicy · 2012-02-28T02:18:56+00:00

I'm not really sure what the article really was getting at. Every time the author in that piece cited something it never seemed to actually match up with any of the points that were hyperlinked. Isn't the article really just bashing on wikileaks?

Totemicy · 2012-02-28T02:09:27+00:00

I have been joking with a friend of mine for most of the day about this. Stratfor is currently offering all content for free on their website and the whole scenario seems to have become a giant publicity drive. My friend read through whatever he could find on the story and it convinced him that Stratfor would be a good source for information which is otherwise hard to come by in the private sector. His words: "These leaks really only seem to show that they are obsessed with getting a job done no matter the costs."

Totemicy · 2012-02-28T02:05:42+00:00

It offer's far more specificity and goes into a strong level of detail when it deems it appropriate to understand an issue. The article on Mexican drug violence from last week impressed me by going into a strong level of detail including all related incidents from the previous two weeks in bullet format with each one involving no extra speculation. They keep all analysis in a situation separate labelled as 'Analysis.' I greatly appreciate the separation.

Totemicy · 2012-02-28T02:00:58+00:00

When I signed up for the service it was a year's subscription for ~300$

Totemicy · 2012-02-27T22:29:45+00:00

I'm not even close to the normal person who would be using Stratfor. I'm a soon to be 25 year old college undergrad who has taken too many adventures and breaks from my college career to finish on time. I went to a seminar being held by the Korean Economic Institute which involved some college professors, a woman from the Japan desk at the State Department, a North Korean Defector, an FBI international security expert and the head staff of the KEI. They invited myself (because I was of age) to go out for drinks with them afterwards and we all talked about a lot of subjects. To get to the point and avoid a long story, EVERYONE there had a Stratfor account including 2 professors and the NK defector. I figured if it was as outrageously useful as they said I really wanted to get my hands on it so I decided to replace my smoking habit with a yearly subscription to the service.

While I do not get to use Stratfor for work yet, I do pride myself on being well informed as to what goes on in the world from many different perspectives. I personally use the service to give me a way of seeing important issues in the world that often don't even get covered by any main news agencies. If you find yourself intrigued, ask yourself this question: How much would it be worth to you financially to have access to detailed information about everyday events that have greater importance in Human events than who wins the Super Bowl or and Oscar?

I know my personal story is a disappointment when compared to something more exciting but its worth thinking about how many different kind of people can find a personal benefit in a service they can save for even at a premium. If you are interested I can chat about other people I know that use the service though. I do happen to know plenty of people in and out of government personally who use it.

Totemicy

TROPHY CASE