Self proclaimed Self-Post
*ban

Here is my second piano cover, on the theme of video games: Professor Layton and the strange village.

{Details on this video}

- Genre: Video game music.
- Composer: Matthew.
- Editing: Matthieu
- Photo: Matthew (This is my own photo.)
- Date of publication on the internet (YouTube): Tuesday, October 24, 2017.

- Composer of the games Professor Layton: Tomohito Nishiura.

Clash of Clans Update - New Village (Night Mod & Balancing Troops) - Date 22 MAY 2017
[url redacted]

I ate at a high end restaurant in a small village in France. Food was delicious -- and the small teaspoon of mustard that came on the side is the thing I remember the most.

Your video, B.C. Village Older Than The Pyramids Unearthed By A Student, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Let's be extremely optimistic and figure that these things work in a 25 meter radius, with 100% kill rate to any mosquito inside that zone for 30 seconds+. That's plenty to put in or near a house and drastically reduce the mosquito population in (and a little bit around) that area. But just a short distance away, the mosquito population will be completely unaffected.

Animals that prey on mosquitoes will find a small dead zone and move on.

Lets say they worked extremely well, and we decided to cover an entire city with a grid of these things. Maybe New York (800 km^2). Would the local ecosystem be affected? Sure. Some species of birds, bats, etc. would move upstate -- but overall there would probably be way less impact on the ecosystem than simply having a gigantic city there in general.

It would probably be better to set them up covering small villages in area with high risk of malaria, in which case any affects on ecosystems would be very small and contained. But on the other hand, first world people like New Yorkers with high population density and more $$$ to burn might be plenty happy to chip in (tax dollars?) for these things if they never got any mosquito bites again. And that would probably help the economy of scale kick in and make it much cheaper to set them up in places that would really benefit...

Very interesting, but I have some questions about the efficacy of those rules/laws with regards to actually keeping the uncensored versions out of German hands.

Here in Thailand, since 2008 all GTA games are specifically banned (after a nutter who killed a taxi driver said he was influenced by GTA), along with any games with "excessive violence" or sexual content. In spite of that, the majority of male students in the High School where I teach have played GTA5 or other GTA games. There are no legit physical copies for sale in stores (I assume they are also removed from Steam for Thai users but I dunno), but like with all media here piracy is rampant and kids either torrent/download pirated copies of the games for themselves or buy a pirated copy of the game on DVD from vendors that can be found in markets in every city or village.

The rampant piracy also circumvents Thai censorship laws that require movies to blur out people smoking, drinking alcohol, or nudity / sexual content. Legit copies (which are rare) adhere to the rules, but most people end up with pirated copies that are more often than not sourced from uncensored versions and therefore don't follow the local rules.

Pretty weird situation. Makes me wonder if now in the internet age many German consumers might have no moral qualms with buying legit German-censored versions of things and then downloading pirated / cracked versions from the internet that circumvent the censorship.

Well, I fully support the Black Lives Movement. Peaceful, and sometimes agitated, marching for justice. Gay Rights. That explosive moment at Stonewall in Greenwich Village, when the gay men fought back and said NO MORE.

Do I want a single woman who is in danger of being physically assaulted to "fight back?" A single gay man? A single black person? No, honey bunny, I absolutely do not. I think that is the height of idiocy for a single individual to fight back against one, two, three men. Especially when they are armed and have proven that they are capable of using that weapon in anger, fear, adrenaline.

Keep yourself safe, deescalate the situation if you can, submit to rape [edit] IF you think the man/men will kill you if you do fight back -- fight back if it is safe to fight back. (Interesting stat -- something like 90% of assaults against women are by single unarmed attackers. No gun? No knife? Try to avoid, try to deescalate, and if that doesn't work, fight back and yell and make yourself as difficult a target as possible.)

I took a self defense class years ago, geared towards women protecting themselves from violence by men. Not because I was afraid, but because of the psychological skills that we were taught about setting boundaries, taking charge, making choices -- skills needed in every day life that can also be applied to rare events of possible violence.

It was called Powerful Choices. Choices, my friend. Choices.

I must say, it is shocking to me that so many people live in a zero sum world. A black and white world. Where there is only one way to respond despite the actual circumstances. That this moment has to be used to fight larger battles or you are a failure.

I am a big fan of using your noggin to be safe. A fan of demonstrations (I prefer peaceful.) A fan of changing the laws, the procedures, the culture. A fan of acting strategically for the long run.

So you have me all wrong, my friend. All wrong.

They could have used this in the '80s when the US deployed Pershing II missiles around small villages in Germany. I know of one case where they got stuck on a tight corner and couldn't move back or forward. After several days they had to pay a farmer so they could demolish and re-build a corner of his house to get the thing free.

I'm not sure if the nuclear warhead was installed the whole time.

It takes a village...

Aside from annexing your lands and turning them into leisure worlds for retired Legionnaires, they also brought central heating, exotic goods, plumbing, roads, law, order, popular clothing styles -- but only for the wealthy -- and at the cost of maybe raping your children to teach your village a lesson to obey Roman rule.

Generations later hardly anyone even remembers and you're now part of the empire. And when you're invaded by other "barbarians" your ancestors will protect their Roman culture as if it were always theirs to enjoy. Fight the other barbarians for us, you barbarian!!

You almost get the feeling they defined the entire future of western civilization. Every nasty bit; confusingly superior customs that are required otherwise you become a slave -- and maybe you'll become a slave anyway, even if you follow the rules. After all, once a bitch, always a bitch and so an entire legion slowly blots out your cultural and genetic existence.

Yay, Roman Empire!

There comes a point where it stops being funny when you crack jokes about the village idiot.

Well, it'll come some time.

Hrm...

"whatever you humanist fuckheads are arguing for"

"I'm sorry, did I trigger you? Did I piss in your safe space? Aww."

Why is it that people that go out of their way to offend suddenly complain when it comes back at them?

I had a pretty reasonable response brewing to the post where you came up with the fuckhead bit, and trashed it because reasonable didn't seem what you were interested in. So why waste my time trying to reason with a person who is unreasonable right?

And hey, that's my presumption. Mebbe I caught you on a bad day, mebbe I'm being the ass here, it's entirely possible.

But this conversation is pretty much as pointless as vocal 3rd wave feminism. It's going around in circles, people occasionally getting mad, and the majority of the sift probably peaked in and decided they couldn't be fucked wading in among the 10 or so people dedicated to perpetuating the "conversation"... And of course it's not really accomplishing anything, we're all still being relatively civil to each other even if a bit terse...

The battle for equality isn't won, but it's pretty close (well, at least in the west, just forget about the majority of the worlds women who still live in conditions that make the 50's seem blissful...). 3rd wavers aren't fighting massive social injustice anymore, they are battling things like #gamergate and feedback against Sarkeesian, Tucker Max or that Return of Kings mob (who seem to be the biggest trolls on the planet but w/e).

Seriously, they are spending a lot of time and energy arguing with the lowest common denominators (who by and large love the attention). There used to be a time you could safely ignore the village idiot because, hey, he's a fucking idiot. Now, any dumbass can post on the internet and people will descend on them like the proverbial plagues of Egypt, followed shortly by supporters showing up. Not because those one offs are indicative of even a significant minority in broader society, but because it generates plenty of online hype to see "some guy" say something fucking awful and then the sides line up to start yelling at each other...

So I'm not overly concerned if we end up agreeing because in the grand scheme of things, it's also fairly pointless. We're both entitled to our opinions and they seem to be vaguely in the same park aka "equality good, hate and oppression bad", seems like a good place to stop.

And the original...

Wages of Fear...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046268/

In a decrepit South American village, men are hired to transport an urgent nitroglycerine shipment without the equipment that would make it safe...


Only this time...it's so they can fish...
Or something like that. Like go kayaking.