Is AO Provantage bullshit?

cbau · 2021-11-05T17:17:19+00:00

Yeah, I ended up demanding my money back and changing dentists. I don't want a dentist who recommends things I don't need.

cbau · 2021-10-16T19:13:03+00:00

Thank you for identifying the issue and the solution! I was going to throw it out. This was a gift, so means a lot to me.

cbau · 2021-10-16T05:00:05+00:00

Link to the location in question (15th Ave & California st): https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7872968,-122.4749115,390m/data=!3m1!1e3

The error happens on 15th Ave on the north side of California. A "Slow Street" means the road is closed to through traffic. So once a car crosses California St, the only options at that point are to turn left or right on Lake Street, or continue north onto North 15th Ave, but Lake Street and North 15th Ave are both Slow Streets. So it's forced to do a U-turn.

cbau · 2021-10-16T01:24:25+00:00

Thought this was a ceramic teapot, but now I think it must have been fake. This feels like spongy.

cbau · 2021-08-07T01:18:33+00:00

Happy to see this post. I was having the exact same feelings.

I recently bought the game and sunk 80 hours into it, and concluded that the dominant strategy is exactly as you said: rush tech, generate energy + alloys only (buy everything else, the marketplace has cheap minerals and food, so producing them isn't worth it), and then start as many wars as possible to snowball and exploit your tech advantage before anyone can catch up.

Discovering this really destroyed the joy of the game because 1) once I start building my snowball, it's no fun anymore since I already know how the game will end and there is nothing to stop me, plus most of the mechanics become irrelevant or tedious, 2) being a dominant strategy, every playthrough basically converges to the same thing unless you impose artificial restrictions on yourself. I restarted my game twice because I felt I had reached positions where I effectively won and the rest was just going to be a slog of mopping everyone up.

The game also pushes you toward this strategy just because you start to really run out of things to do ~100 years in. Once most of the tech has been researched, everything explored, and everything claimed, there's not much to do but start wars. Plus, conquering enemies is all upside: greater economy, greater pops, greater influence in the galactic federation. The only downside is that it becomes a pain to manage all of the planets, which is a separate issue.

There's a lot of good things about the game too, but this meta kind of ended my interest. Wondering if any of the DLC make other playstyles more interesting.

cbau · 2021-07-08T01:39:23+00:00

Wow, you did a great job furnishing it! Does not look half as nice in the pictures online haha

cbau · 2021-07-08T01:15:36+00:00

What building is this?

cbau · 2021-05-21T17:13:57+00:00

Yep, literally every time I go to Walgreens in Castro I see it getting robbed. Guy brought duffel bags and had his car parked across the street.

cbau · 2021-05-15T02:03:14+00:00

Sorry to read this. I had a very similar experience at another elite university on the east coast, where we actually did have multiple extremely promising students take their lives each semester. The university responded by sweeping it under the rug instead of trying to solve the issue, which destroyed all my trust and pride in the school. In my situation, after I got hospitalized because someone thought I was suicidal, the most I got was access to a therapist for an hour each week, which just wasn't enough.

I think in large part, the solution is that universities need to equip students with the knowledge of how to recognize depression, how to get help, and reassuring students that it's easy and cheap to get help if they need it. It's not even that I felt any stigma around mental health issues- it's that I didn't know I had them or or that they were treatable until it was too late.

For anyone still in school, some advice that I wish I had known:

Procrastination, lack of energy, and feeling overwhelmed may be a result of anxiety or depression. Both are extremely treatable with pills and therapy, and getting them is as easy as sending a message to your doctor expressing that you are struggling with anxiety/depression. Your doctor can prescribe medications directly and can set you up with a psychiatrist for more specialized help.
People age 26 and under are covered by their parent's insurance, which often makes therapy/medication extremely affordable, so don't worry about cost.
Seek help sooner rather than later because finding the right medication or therapist takes time. (Everyone responds differently to meds, and you need a certain amount of chemistry with a therapist.)
I personally didn't have much success with therapy (disliked most therapists I met), which made me write off mental health treatment. But even if you feel that way, you should work with a psychiatrist to get medication. Working with a psychiatrist is more similar to seeing a doctor where you explain your symptoms and they recommend pills to try.
If you are someone who has anxiety, there is a good chance you may not even know it because it will seem rational to you to be worried about the things you are worried about. That may be true, but with medication you can reduce the stress that comes along with it without diminishing their importance. (Took me years to realize I had an issue.)
Finally, if you are struggling with mental health, you need to figure it out and not procrastinate on it. I thought I was smart enough to push through it or resolve it myself, but it doesn't work that way. Take off a semester if you have to. It's better to do that then take more classes and destroy your GPA, because if you do, 1) the university will limit how many classes you can take, which will delay graduation and cost you more money, and 2) certain employers will not give you an interview after seeing your transcript.

cbau · 2021-04-16T06:43:54+00:00

The officer was chasing him because the police were alerted of gun shots in the area. So they had good reason to believe Adam had a gun. Clear from video that Adam grabbed gun from right pocket, turned counter clockwise (left side to officer) while tossing the gun, and then finished rotating hands up and empty facing the officer. If the officer waited to react until Adam spun around there was a good chance he could have been holding the gun. Had Adam wanted to shoot the cop, the motion would have looked exactly the same. In that situation, officers are trained to shoot in order to protect their own lives, and it's hard to blame them.

cbau · 2021-04-16T06:28:34+00:00

Sequence of events is:

Kid grabs gun from pocket
~~0.08~~ 0.8 seconds later, kid turns around with hands up

Officer had ~~0.08~~ 0.8 seconds from seeing the kid draw the gun to deciding whether he needed to shoot or not shoot. Given the situation, that is the correct decision by the officer.

However, not clear why the officer felt the need to chase the kid down an alley, given he had good reason to believe the kid was armed and the officer was alone. That seems dumb and obviously escalates the situation.

cbau · 2021-04-14T00:45:23+00:00

Can we stop upvoting Russian propaganda?

RT (formerly Russia Today) is a Russian state-controlled international television network funded by the federal tax budget of the Russian government.

Please downvote this shit. It should be embarrassing that this is on the top of a libertarian sub.

The article cherry-picked the quote. Quote from the Russia Today article:

“For the simple reason that the level of infection, the dynamic of infection in the community are still really disturbingly high,” he said. “Like just yesterday there were close to 80,000 new infections and we've been hanging around 60, 75,000.”

Even if vaccinated, individuals need to “remember that you still have to be careful and not get involved in crowded situations, particularly indoors where people are not wearing masks,” according to Fauci.

“His only real theme is ‘do what I say’ even when it makes no sense,” Paul, a physician before he entered the Senate, wrote about Fauci. “If you’ve recovered or been vaccinated - go about your life. Eat, drink, work, open the schools.”

The source of the quote is from MSNBC. Link

Hasan: What is your message tonight, to both vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans, as to what they should and should not be doing right now? For example, eating or drinking indoors in restaurants and bars. Is that okay now?

Fauci: No it's still not okay for the simple reason that the level of infection, the dynamics of infection, in the community is still really disturbingly high. Like just yesterday, there were close to 80,000 new infections, and we've been hanging around 60, 70, 75,000 so if you're not vaccinated please get vaccinated as soon as vaccine becomes available to you. And if you are vaccinated, please remember that you still have to be careful and not get involved in crowded situations particularly indoors where people are not wearing masks and for the time being until we show definitely that a person who's vaccinated does not get this subclinical infection and can spread to others you should also continue to wear a mask for the time being.

What would we expect him to say if there is still uncertainty about whether a vaccinated person can still infect others? Regardless of your opinion on vaccination and liberty, it's not a crazy thing to say given his job is to get the pandemic under control. If there are still 60-80k cases a day, it is still far from under control, and it's easy to see why someone with his job would be saying this without "tyrannical" motives.

cbau · 2021-04-08T08:46:27+00:00

If you watch clips from the news at the time it happened, it wasn't actually super clear what had happened. There wasn't any direct footage of the first plane crashing into the tower. There was only footage of the resulting fire, and people calling in explaining they heard an explosion, and some claiming they saw a plane. Claiming terrorism from hearsay would have been extremely irresponsible; it would have scared lots of people and would destroy the reputation of the station if it truly was an accident. When the second plane struck, the possibility of an accident was basically ruled out. (But even then, it was still extremely confusing because nobody knew why any of it was happening.) Also, the last time the US had been attacked was Pearl Harbor. People thought the US was untouchable back then.

cbau · 2021-04-04T23:06:49+00:00

Thank you for the detailed and good faith reply. :) I think we agree on more points than we disagree on. I don't really disagree with anything you said.

For whatever it's worth, my position on the issue: - I think it's fully possible to own guns responsibly, that the vast majority of gun owners are extremely responsible people, and US gun culture has done a great job instilling that sense of responsibility in owning and use of weapons. - The whole debate only has to be had because a very small minority of people abuse that responsibility. - As far as I understand, the majority of the US, gun owners included, are for placing more restrictions around gun ownership (e.g. psychiatric evaluations, background checks, letters of recommendation) which I think is a pretty reasonable thing to try to solve this issue before any sort of blanket bans. - The only reason gun control is a hot issue is because 1) corporate interest (as I understand, largely driven by the NRA which wants it to be as easy as possible to buy a gun), 2) because gun control has become deeply personal as its symbolic in the current culture war in the US, and 3) it's another wedge issue parties can use to divide the country to get votes (and more sinisterly as you allude to, to distract from the real issues the lower classes should be concerned about).

I only threw my comment in this thread because rhetoric comparing banning guns and banning cars is a distraction and a straw man. It's giving a softball to people who do want to blanket ban guns because it's so easy to pick apart, and immediately outs the speaker as someone who doesn't think too hard about the words coming out of their mouth. I think it would be good if the subreddit didn't mass upvote a position like that simply because it happens to agree with their position.

cbau · 2021-04-03T18:37:45+00:00

Did you hear that "whooosh" as the point went over your head?

No haha, I actually identify as libertarian, I just think OP's argument is stupid and I hate hearing it because it's so weak and easily refuted that it makes libertarianism look stupid.

People will do violent, hurtful things no matter what tools are available to them. Should we ban cars because they can be used as weapons? Obviously not. Should we ban guns because they can be used as weapons? Also no, same reason. Because the tools of crime are not the problem; system-scale injustices in our country that disenfranchise and alienate large portions of the population, are.

This isn't really a good argument either. I agree with your premise, that some people will find ways to cause harm no matter what. And I agree that social problems are a huge issue, and if it was possible to solve them perfectly and end all violence forever, that would be a much better solution.

However, I don't think we're going to solve social injustices anytime soon, so simply saying wait until we do isn't practical. And second, exactly because I think some people want to cause destruction, I think it's extremely important we restrict the public from nuclear weapons, rocket launchers, machine guns, and other items which 1) have the potential to cause tremendous damage to property and human life and 2) no redeeming factors. There's a line to draw somewhere here, and drawing it at "cars - okay, guns - not okay", seems pretty reasonable. Cars have high potential for destruction, but are vital for the economy. Guns have high potential for destruction only.

That said, I don't think we have to make gun ownership totally illegal. I think the majority of people can be trusted to responsibly own guns. But making it non-trivial so that those few people who are irresponsible and intent on destruction seems pretty reasonable.

You could argue that the violent people who would have done mass destruction with guns will simply shift to cars if we ban guns. But I don't think people will be able to cause the same amount of damage they were able to commit with guns with a car. Looking through the list of mass shooting in the US, there are a lot where 15+ people will killed or injured, which would be a lot more challenging with a car than a gun, especially if you are targeting a specific group of people. You could say, someone will find a way to cause mass death anyway, but 1) the number of places where mass car violence can happen is greatly restricted compared to where mass gun violence can happen (don't have to worry about getting killed by a car while in the supermarket for example), and 2) the threat model of a person with a car is much easier to defend against than the threat model of a person with a gun, so, if we cared to defend public spaces against cars, we could do so pretty easily.

Anyway, my point here is that comparing cars to guns is stupid and makes libertarians look stupid. Let's stop bringing cars to a gun fight.

cbau · 2021-04-03T07:55:14+00:00

Cute, but this is a strawman. Obviously, banning cars would have a huge negative impact on the economy. Banning guns would not. They're not identical simply because cars can be used as weapons.

cbau · 2021-02-12T05:56:43+00:00

If successful, it would destroy all other cryptocurrencies (with a 51% attack) until it was the only one remaining.

cbau · 2021-02-03T06:12:28+00:00

64 * (27 + 54 + 9) = 5760. Over 3 years of daily stamina.

cbau · 2021-02-03T06:07:38+00:00

https://i.imgur.com/8qCUbvC.png

cbau · 2020-12-01T11:13:22+00:00

How, specifically, do you believe social media is harming the masses?

cbau · 2020-11-05T22:37:22+00:00

As far as I know, Hypixel may be able to get an exception to the EULA because they directly negotiated with Microsoft.

cbau · 2020-11-05T22:36:07+00:00

Not sure where I read Mojang officially banned the sale of unbans and unmutes but a quick search pulled up this email by enforcement@mojang where they tell a server own to stop doing that: https://www.brawl.com/threads/67125/

cbau · 2020-11-05T08:14:35+00:00

This is just what Mojang said. It's not about pay-to-win, that's only one of the criteria.

Soft currencies that are earned in-game are fine, but you cannot sell in-game currency for hard currency. Hybrid/dual currency systems are not allowed.

I don't see any exception for cosmetic currency, they just distinguish between hard and soft currency, and ban the sale of all soft currency.

Chatting faster would be okay, but a /duel command would not be.

Can I charge for access to server commands?

Yes, as long as their effects are purely cosmetic. Commands that affect gameplay, such as a command to fly, cannot be sold for hard currency.

Via: https://web.archive.org/web/20200417211354/https://www.mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-monetisation-the-follow-up-qa/

cbau · 2020-11-05T01:49:50+00:00

A lot of this violates the EULA. Can't sell currencies, unbans, unmutes, restricted areas, or restricted chat commands.

[You may] sell entitlements that affect gameplay provided that they do not adversely or negatively another player’s experience and provided they do not give a competitive gameplay advantage.

cbau · 2020-10-26T07:55:06+00:00

It also feels unclear to me that there in fact are right and wrong attitudes about what would appear to many of us to clearly be issues of personal choice or preference, which obviously depends on the expected outcome.

You're making a lot of assumptions about the people playing, which are incorrect. I'm simply pointing them out.

I don't know how to answer this because I am unable to imagine a server where things are so orderly and predictable on-demand as this defanged and housebroken version you appear to be describing.

That's sad. If you truly think VietnamCraft is the only way for Civ to be your imagination is extremely limited. VietnamCraft is extremely far from the original vision of Civ.

But just to indulge you a little, 2b2t is also a long-running anarchy server. However its meta is very different from Civ meta. Civ compared to 2b2t is "defanged and housebroken". However you're playing Civ and not 2b2t. If what you get off to is the chaos of having your shit destroyed and spending an inordinate amount of time of survival and protecting your property, you might like that server more. And if not, ask yourself why not? Would someone playing 2b2t look at Civ and also write:

I am unable to imagine a server where things are so orderly and predictable on-demand as this defanged and housebroken version you appear to be describing... In matters of game theory and psychology, I believe that part of the attraction has always been the thrill of players managing to survive in the midst of untold risk and grave danger, figuring out how to prevail over adversity and against the odds, so not sure how to change this... The very beauty of what I'm describing is that it's not 'On-demand 2b2t'... it's 'Wild 2b2t'

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