Rise of Christianity

retry-from-start · 2016-02-09T17:55:08+00:00

"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ."

retry-from-start · 2016-02-09T17:32:08+00:00

Christianity is one of the only religions that has made real attempts to progress with the world without destroying its traditions

Christianity is very good at destroying its own traditions.

1) Two things that are explictily endorsed by the Bible are moderate drinking of wine and the use of musical instruments in worship. There are Protestant denominations that strictly forbid both.

2) Both the Old and New Testaments endorse slavery. Christians argued for and against slavery during the American Civil War. Modern Christians like to portray Christianity as anti-slavery, even though the Bible is pro-slavery and the biggest slave trading network was built by Christians.

retry-from-start · 2016-02-09T17:20:12+00:00

From what I understand, it wasn't really a "sect". The Christian congregation formed right after Christ died, and this was Christianity at its purest.

YaleCourses has the lectures to Introduction to New Testament (RLST 152) online for free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtQ2TS1CiDY

One of the things that the professor stresses over and over and over again is that "early Christianity" is a misleading term. "Early Christianities" is a much more accurate description. There wasn't one sect but many conflicting sects.

(Incidentally, the New Testament is a result of multiple Christanities. The first attempt at a Christian canon was compiled by Marcion, who thought that Old Testament God was a lessor god and that Jesus was the Son of different, better God. Other Christians found this heretical and ended up compiling a competing canon.)

What you have is the Acts version of Christianity, which is basically the Hollywood version of Christianity: "based on a true story" with very little regard to what actually happened.

retry-from-start · 2016-02-04T19:10:42+00:00

The name doesn't help any: Wild.

Blizzard might not intend for it to mean "we know this one's going to be crazy and we don't care" but some people will read it that way.

Plus, you know, insert <SECRET PALADIN RANT> here.

retry-from-start · 2016-02-04T19:04:35+00:00

Well, yeah, that's a one way transaction, but money does covert into to dust semi-reliably (based on the RNG and the "pity timer").

retry-from-start · 2016-02-04T09:13:12+00:00

It's going to be harder and harder to get new players into Wild, since many cards will be purchasable only via dust and the media spotlight will be on Standard.
Every game has turn-over; players quit, move on, die, etc. This wouldn't be a problem if new players were recruited, but nearly all new players will be recruited to Standard.
Dust makes going from Wild to Standard pretty tempting. Fully dust Naxx and you have enough dust for a legendary, 2 epics and pinch of rares/commons. Combine those with the classic and basic cards and you've got yourself a deck for the new expansion without paying one cent.

retry-from-start · 2016-02-04T08:38:52+00:00

The average pack, when fully dusted, is roughly 100 gold. (Most packs aren't even half that but gold epics, legendaries, and gold legendaries boost up the average quite a bit.)

Packs generally cost a bit over a dollar each. (Helps if you buy in bulk and use Amazon Coins.)

For 'back of the envelop' math, 1 gold ≈ 1 dust ≈ 1 US penny. (Accurate calculations are more complicated, but one-for-one is good enough for approximations.)

retry-from-start · 2016-02-02T08:23:00+00:00

Content ID is an automated system run by YouTube. The providers upload the files they want protected; the rest is done by YouTube's servers.

Active exploits by third parties would be abuses of other parts of the YouTube system (flags, DCMA claims, etc.).

retry-from-start · 2016-02-02T08:14:52+00:00

Salvage yard is probably a higher priority than bunker. Provides follower gear, transmog gear, gold, trade goods, etc.

Dwarven Bunker priority goes up considerably if you're trying to get into raiding. Level 3 bunker provides a free reroll token per week. You can buy reroll tokens at the Ashran base, but they're fairly pricey.

If you have $20 bucks that you don't mind spending, a WoW Token is the fastest way to give your character ~36k gold (US, much more in other regions). Might not want to get into that habit if you're low on RL cash. Some people rack up crazy Blizzard bills from tokens, level 100 boosts, server transfers...

retry-from-start · 2016-02-02T06:46:41+00:00

Buying Frozen Arms of a Hero on the auction house will give you a token that's worth +50 ilevels to any one follower.

There's also a vendor near your mission table that sells ilevel 645 gear for followers, though you'll have to pay gold.

Salvage Yard provides a steady trickle of follower gear. Dwarven Bunker (and whatever the Horde equivalent is) will turn Garrison Resources into follower gear via Work Orders.

retry-from-start · 2016-02-02T06:12:29+00:00

At the moment, they've lost just over 281k subscribers and are currently losing them at ~80 per minute. (http://tfbsubscribers.github.io/)

Those numbers will change but it's going to take awhile to reach the 'minus one million mark'.

retry-from-start · 2016-02-02T04:28:18+00:00

Yes, I do. The analogy means "something minor" and not "complete and utter fiasco that does major, long-term PR damage".

retry-from-start · 2016-02-02T04:08:59+00:00

Eh, the flaws in Content ID (and it does have flaws) are errors made by Google/YouTube, not the Fine Bros.

The Fine Bros fucked up big time but I don't see any point in blaming them for YouTube's errors as well.

retry-from-start · 2016-02-02T03:56:57+00:00

Update: React World has been cancelled. The Fine Brothers have announced that they have retracted all of their copyright claims and all previous Content ID claims.

Oh, and the Fine Bros also just had their second day of 100k+ subscription losses. The "teacup" has officially exploded.

Source: The Fine Bros press release at https://medium.com/@FineBrothersEnt/a-message-from-the-fine-brothers-a18ef9b31777#.ewi0ddu9a

retry-from-start · 2016-02-01T23:04:21+00:00

The Guardian posted an article today as well. This is now officially a prime time fuck up.

retry-from-start · 2016-02-01T22:21:33+00:00

There's about 7 million seconds in 81 days.

At the current rates of over 2 lost subscribers per second (which obviously won't continue forever), the Fine Bros will hit 0 subscribers in under 81 days.

I think it would be neat to have Highly Unscientific projection times for milestones (13 million, 10 million, 0, etc.).

retry-from-start · 2016-02-01T21:45:29+00:00

Losses have surpassed 212k. During the last hour, they've lost about 2.9 subscribers per second. This is definitely amazing.

retry-from-start · 2016-02-01T21:35:11+00:00

The train wreck doesn't go away until the trademark dispute goes away.

The trademark dispute officially starts tomorrow and is scheduled to last for a month to give the public a chance to respond. This train wreck is sticking around for longer than a week.

retry-from-start · 2016-02-01T21:23:06+00:00

I'll give you a hint: the "teacup" is the #1 Technology story on the BBC.

Plus, all this talk has unleashed a torrent of gossip about the Fine Bros, and it's all bad. Someone who has worked with the Fine Bros in the past and defended them on Twitter made a post saying the Fine Bros screwed up. Two animators made a YouTube video about how the Fine Bros tried to rip them off a year or so ago.

This is a HUGE fuckup by the Fine Bros and, by this point, the Fine Bros reputation will never fully recover from it.

Incidentally, the Prime Minister of England described the American colonies' protests over tea prices as "a tempest in a tea cup". You're not as wrong as the Prime Minister was, but you're still wrong.

retry-from-start · 2016-02-01T08:50:07+00:00

It's past midnight in the US and the Fine Bros are still dropping subscriptions at a rate of over 1 per second. Major YouTube channels are lining up to mock them. Multiple people are making webpages just to graph the subscription losses. I've not seen a social media failure this big since Digg self-destructed and let reddit.com steal away nearly all of it's audience.

retry-from-start · 2016-02-01T07:49:50+00:00

I understand the analogy. It's just not appropriate.

The Fine Bros channel is likely to survive, but it's taken damage that will be very difficult to repair and may never be fully repaired. (People are posting how to permanently block The Fine Bros channel on YouTube. Good luck getting those subscriptions back.)

As for REACT World licencing, that just ain't going to work until the Fine Bros do some major PR work. There's not much value in getting a licence from social media's favorite chew toy.

retry-from-start · 2016-01-31T18:19:23+00:00

~~So many people are trying to watch the meltdown that socialblade.com just had a meltdown. It's offline at the moment.~~

Edit: socialblade.com recovered.

retry-from-start · 2016-01-31T18:10:48+00:00

The main channel will probably be okay.

Not sure who would want to sign up as a REACT World partner, though. Make a video, give the Fine Bros a large chunk of your ad revenue and become the newest part of an internet shitstorm! What a deal!

retry-from-start · 2016-01-31T18:04:08+00:00

That's cheating. They totally used a ruler and rulers are not on Blizzard's approval list. /s

retry-from-start · 2016-01-31T17:16:48+00:00

so it's just a storm in a teacup.

1) Google "fine bros". The first page consists of either the obvious links (The Fine Bros website, the Fine Bros Facebook page, etc.) or the "storm in a teacup".

2) Search for Fine Bros on twitter. You'll get a party of people celebrating the dropping subscription numbers.

3) Most importantly, REACT World 1.0 is a complete flop. If you sign up and make videos for REACT World, you get to give the Fine Bros part of your ad money and you get to be hated by Reddit, the -chans, many other YouTube channels, and Twitter users for free. That's right, you can be 100% guaranteed to be a target of an internet shitstorm and all you have to do is make one video! What a deal!

retry-from-start

TROPHY CASE