Unfortunately for some of you, I must point out that part of the reason things have been shitty is because of how crappy the MK games have been. Ever since MK3 and beyond, ALL of the fatalities have been SHIT.

I mean it. MK:DA has some fun gameplay and they tried to go back to their roots, but they still failed to make blood look good in 3D. However, having it stay was definitely fun, but they should have removed it at the beginning of every fatality.

Midway just can't make a Mortal Kombat game anymore because NO ONE REMEMBERS WHAT MADE MORTAL KOMBAT A GOOD GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE!

If they'd just do some really thoughtful, unique, shocking gore with some similarly non-cookie-cutter combat along with stage fatalities that aren't all boring bullshit like the new ones, such as re-doing impalement and adding realtime interaction with making the opponent get impaled, decals for entry wound/exit wound, arterial spray and blood gobs spraying out on contact with a new graphic of blood dripping out through the exit wound, blood smearing on clothing/spikes/etc, animated decals for bleeding wounds from impalement, actually decent blood splat animations for contact with the ground similar to the way it used to be in the 2D days).... and much more... I think people would actually be interested again.

Basically, THIS level of detail is what is LACKING in these new games! It's all cookie-cutter crap that's just recycled over and over, like some bullshit yearly football game!

I once had an idea of mine get implemented into a game. It was called Blood, and was developed by Monolith Software.

Initially their blood didn't make any contact with the ground, and just disappeared. I hate that. I was in the closed beta, and I sent them an email telling them the importance of having blood always make contact with the ground. I gave them an example of how shitty it is when that happens by mentioning Primal Rage and it's console ports. I also mentioned that due to it being developed on the Build engine, they'd have to match or exceed Duke Nukem 3-D's gore in order to be successful.

They then actually did it. It looked good. Unfortunately, sometimes in the game there's an arterial spray when you shoot someone and the way it worked wasn't compatible with such animations. Some higher-up scrapped it. It would have been better to have just dropped it on the arterial spray, but oh well.

They also implemented the ability to kick a decapitated head around in multiplayer due to my suggestion. I told them that Hexen had set a precedent that they had to live up to. It involved actually programming some kind of scripted physics-like behavior for the head being kicked/rolling, but they actually did it.

Back then you could actually talk to developers and maybe even get your idea heard. These days, all that ever happens is a large group assembles, money is the goal, artists have really gay ideas about how thing should look (in MK's example, at least), designers don't notice things like how shitty it looks when Scorpion's spear goes into someone's throat in the next-gen Mortal Kombat game, and it seems like no one ever actually says anything about how shitty the game they're working on is.

It may be newsworthy as might any video which catches on tape people being killed. Being newsworthy alone does not disqualify the content from being snuff.

The only narrow gray area in VideoSift's snuff policy is for brief loss of life that is part of a longer newscast or documentary.

Any short video that just panders to the "OMFG watch the horror of these dudes getting killed" primal curiosity, like this one, does fall into the snuff definition in the posting guidelines.

If this video is allowed we will be setting an ugly precedent that would then allow every one of the hundreds of fatal car accident videos available. From there everyone will be pushing to allow more gore. It's a slippery slope.

If you're that interested in seeing people die, spend 5 seconds on LiveLeak and you'll be hit with an avalanche of death videos that will satisfy anyone's blood thirst.

It's interesting. All socially repressed males likely rejoiced when the guy cracked her, and yet most would probably never hit a girl, and spit on those who do.

I suppose these are our primal "instincts" or whatever you'd like to call them coming out.

This is similar to the reaction people have when someone who did something wrong gets punished in spades, and unjustly so. For example, many people would savagely rejoice to hear of a rapist being castrated and bled to death for what he did. Is that a just fate in a civilized society? No. Are these people sick in the mind? Seemingly.

But not necessarily.

I am not saying that I am apparently psychotic and think that cruelly rejecting a person is a crime and deserves significant retribution, by the way.

These are normal reactions. What of ourselves individually and as a species, at our lowest levels comprises them; who knows? Are they morally correct? No.

Also, you are correct in being disturbed by this reaction. I just thought I'd shed some light on exactly what was going on.

While they are fighting with him... they could have been killed or worse maimed, because they were dealing with him without watching what else is going on around them.

The simple solution is if you cant make the arrest successfully with out having to beat the shit out of some one, then do not make the arrest at that time. Look for a time when the circumstances will better favor a successful arrest.
IE when you have more backup.

What this appears to be is some one resisting arrest and then being stepped through the force continuum. There is a fallacy that violence will work, this is not true in all cases. Some people will revert to primal instinct and therefore fight you every time you use violence to force them to do something.

Violence and Violence equals more violence. (however it sometimes may be needed understandably)

As you are punching some one in the stomach telling them to stop fighting stop fighting... that makes no sense, and it perpetuates the situation.

If its a minor offense that does not require lethal or hard physical force to arrest then let them go, and later execute a warrant for search, and arrest on that persons abode, go in hard and fast in the middle of the night.

>> ^Bidouleroux:
Someone is wrong on the Internet again, so here goes another long reply... *snip*

Ok, so you try to suggest that I'm linking things together that you never did... let's go back to your original post:

"Well, let's consider this: suddenly people have an urge to see homeless people so they can laugh at them. An industry emerges, paying homeless people a pittance for the right to film them. The films are silent and only show homeless people doing what they do everyday: being homeless. No first-hand degradation, no violence. Would Chomsky approve? No, and for the same reason he doesn't approve of pornography."
You're creating these ridiculous analogies and hypothesis that really have no baring on this. Again, you're assuming the thing being filmed is wrong. You, here are saying that homelessness and being homeless is wrong/degrading, so you're trying to link 'laughing at homeless people' with 'watching people have sex'. You're assuming that the people having sex should feel ashamed or watching them having sex is the same as laughing at homeless people.

It's not.

In any way, so you can just stop trying to create these ridiculous links.

Would Chomsky approve then of a silent documentary showing the hardships of homeless people? Yes. Would Chomsky approve of erotic literature, photography and film? My guess would be again yes. It's all in the message and reception thereof.
I truly get the impression he dislikes anything to do with sex in media, at least he pretends to, tries to sound morally outraged. The thing is, it's shown to be so often the case that the ones screaming the loudest over these 'moral issues' are closet consumers of some of the worst stuff. Time and time again men of the cloth or other 'moral crusaders' have been shown to be engaging in, or consuming exactly the stuff they publicly decry. It seems to be that these people are brought up with the skewed moral stance of 'sex is wrong unless it's with the light off, between man and wife', and yet they have these attractions to sexual material. Their given solution? Try to blame anyone who created the sexual material as if it's their fault that they were 'tempted', rather than seeing that sex in and of itself is not wrong.


"I would guess that for the majority of men, seeing women as objects stems from the primal urge to simply fuck everything that moves. This can also apply to a lesser degree to women in regard to men. It depends on both nature and nurture. Sade even showed us quite graphically that we as a species are the most prone to criminality, in a very wide archaic sense, when we fuck (as it would seem we are wired not to care about anything else but attaining an orgasm)."
See, you, here equate sex with violence. You certainly come across as having the opinion that sex is bad because it makes us all criminals and violent. Absolute bullshit.

Yes there are those who completely succumb to 'primal urges' and are violent to people and forcibly have sex with others... but just because some people are like that you're going to label everyone like that? You use examples from Sade, from the 18th and 19th centuries... people were a LOT less educated, a LOT less enlightened, and a LOT more prone to act out anything they felt.

The deal with education, with being taught about the feelings of others, about becoming more enlightened people is this: We don't have to be violent, we can manage our anger if we get annoyed, we can get aroused by someone and yet know it's not appropriate to just try and have sex with them. This is because we have been brought up to be able to empathize and think 'hmm, I probably wouldn't like to be fucked by this other person just because they want to. I'd prefer to be able to chose who I have sex with'.

However it doesn't mean that pornography, which caters to our sexual urges, is not degrading and objectifying women (here pornography should be taken to mean something along the lines of "the pornographic industry, including the viewers and the profit makers"). Pornography is something that ultimately should not exist in a civilized society, like violence and crime. No one would say violence and crime are needed in a society so that we may quench those violent and criminal urges we have, although most of us are indeed sometimes violent and criminally inclined. We are after all animals, programmed to survive and replicate (be violent and fuck, basically). But staying at the level of animals because it is pleasurable is ridiculous. If everyone thought like that, we'd still be living in trees.

See, reading that, I don't know how you can suggest that you haven't equated pornography with violence. You try to create some weird definition of what pornography is to be included in this thing. I say that pornography is something that is made with the sole intention of arousing the viewer/reader, whereas erotica is something which is more artful, but can still be arousing. Neither of these are inherently wrong.

Insert violence or degradation into them and they are, but you seem to think the very act of recording people having sex is degrading, so you're viewpoint is quite, quite skewed.

You bring up the Marquis a fair bit, you try to equate watching people have sex with watching people being homeless... you have some issues regarding sex, you do, no two ways about it, and that's not me drawing some weird links, that's just reading what you've written.

Someone is wrong on the Internet again, so here goes another long reply...

>> ^spoco2:
But, see, you're taking the stance that images or movies of people having sex is inherently wrong. WHY?

Where exactly do I say that? Please enlighten me. I took the time to define pornography as something that doesn't include the sexual images themselves and you somehow twist this and dare say that I think images and movies of people having sex are inherently wrong? Great non sequitur! Images of violence and criminality aren't inherently wrong either, but see, that doesn't mean violence and criminilaty themselves aren't wrong and that certainly doesn't mean that condoning violence and criminal behavior isn't wrong too. The latter point is the most relevant to pornography, since the sexual act itself isn't what is at stake here. But the act of pornography, defined to incorporate the objectification and degradation of women in a process of sexual gratification is inherently wrong, yes. If your images and movies do not objectify or degrade women for sexual gratification, then don't call it pornography.

Come on, if all the parties in the photos/videos are happy doing so, and no-one is hurt, no-one is treated badly, why is it wrong? Trying to build the fallacious argument that adult entertainment = violence and crime is ludicrous.

I am not equating "adult entertainment" to "violence and crime". Stop trying to subtly change the terms, you're not fooling anyone here (I would hope so). I am making an analogy between pornography and violence/crime. If you don't know the difference between "to equate" and "to make an analogy", I'm sorry for you.

Violence and crime are doing bad things to other people, pure pornography, just showing people having sex is not. It CAN be if the acts depicted are violent or degrading, but that's swinging back to the violence and crime angle. If what's displayed is two people enjoying being with each other, what is wrong with that in any society?

"Pure pornography" doesn't exist. It's your own little semantic wet dream. In any form of communication there is always a message that is inherent in the message itself, given by the outside context or a combination of both. When the context changes, for example when society evolves, the same message can mean other things that what was intended at first. Sade is a great example: condemned as immoral scum by even the most liberal representatives of the Enlightenment, he was then seen simply as a curious pathological case and then recently as a literary genius. Still, his books and their contents haven't changed in 200 years.

You seem to dislike sex because it's a primal' urge and therefore wrong... so, we shouldn't eat then? Or at least not enjoy eating? We shouldn't have sex at all then?
To try and suggest that a civil society has no enjoyment for the sake of enjoyment is missing the point of life.

I would suggest you acquaint yourself with the philosophy of Epicurus. Of course his views are dated now, but you could certainly use a confrontation with a well thought out viewpoint on pleasure and enjoyment that doesn't involve giving way to every desire that comes across your primitive mind.

If you start from the point of view that THERE IS NOTHING wrong with sex, then as long as all people involved in the creation of porn are happy and healthy and enjoying themselves, then THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH PORN.

Ok then, if I start from the view that THERE IS NOTHING wrong with lying (a natural action for all of us), then as long as all people involved in the creation of propaganda are happy and healthy and enjoying themselves, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH PROPAGANDA? (and here I use propaganda in its pejorative sense, obviously) Your logic is spotless, but your premises are false.

It's just sad that there is a lot of mistreatment in the industry, but that doesn't mean the entire genre is wrong, just many of the people producing it.

The misapplying of an idea or concept by some individuals does not in anyway guarantee the correctness of that idea or concept. I do not see how you could present this blanket statement as an argument. The following is also not an argument concerning pornography by the way: "It's just fun that there is a lot of happiness in the industry, but that doesn't mean the entire genre is right, just many of the people producing it." You just threw something about pornography in the middle of something irrelevant about mistreatment in pornography. In other words, you've put a red herring in your straw man. Again, you're not fooling anyone.

>> ^Bidouleroux:
However it doesn't mean that pornography, which caters to our sexual urges, is not degrading and objectifying women (here pornography should be taken to mean something along the lines of "the pornographic industry, including the viewers and the profit makers"). Pornography is something that ultimately should not exist in a civilized society, like violence and crime. No one would say violence and crime are needed in a society so that we may quench those violent and criminal urges we have, although most of us are indeed sometimes violent and criminally inclined. We are after all animals, programmed to survive and replicate (be violent and fuck, basically). But staying at the level of animals because it is pleasurable is ridiculous. If everyone thought like that, we'd still be living in trees.


But, see, you're taking the stance that images or movies of people having sex is inherently wrong. WHY?

Come on, if all the parties in the photos/videos are happy doing so, and no-one is hurt, no-one is treated badly, why is it wrong? Trying to build the fallacious argument that adult entertainment = violence and crime is ludicrous.

Violence and crime are doing bad things to other people, pure pornography, just showing people having sex is not. It CAN be if the acts depicted are violent or degrading, but that's swinging back to the violence and crime angle. If what's displayed is two people enjoying being with each other, what is wrong with that in any society?

You seem to dislike sex because it's a primal' urge and therefore wrong... so, we shouldn't eat then? Or at least not enjoy eating? We shouldn't have sex at all then?

To try and suggest that a civil society has no enjoyment for the sake of enjoyment is missing the point of life.

If you start from the point of view that THERE IS NOTHING wrong with sex, then as long as all people involved in the creation of porn are happy and healthy and enjoying themselves, then THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH PORN.

It's just sad that there is a lot of mistreatment in the industry, but that doesn't mean the entire genre is wrong, just many of the people producing it.

Well, let's consider this: suddenly people have an urge to see homeless people so they can laugh at them. An industry emerges, paying homeless people a pittance for the right to film them. The films are silent and only show homeless people doing what they do everyday: being homeless. No first-hand degradation, no violence. Would Chomsky approve? No, and for the same reason he doesn't approve of pornography.

Would Chomsky approve then of a silent documentary showing the hardships of homeless people? Yes. Would Chomsky approve of erotic literature, photography and film? My guess would be again yes. It's all in the message and reception thereof.


I would guess that for the majority of men, seeing women as objects stems from the primal urge to simply fuck everything that moves. This can also apply to a lesser degree to women in regard to men. It depends on both nature and nurture. Sade even showed us quite graphically that we as a species are the most prone to criminality, in a very wide archaic sense, when we fuck (as it would seem we are wired not to care about anything else but attaining an orgasm).

However it doesn't mean that pornography, which caters to our sexual urges, is not degrading and objectifying women (here pornography should be taken to mean something along the lines of "the pornographic industry, including the viewers and the profit makers"). Pornography is something that ultimately should not exist in a civilized society, like violence and crime. No one would say violence and crime are needed in a society so that we may quench those violent and criminal urges we have, although most of us are indeed sometimes violent and criminally inclined. We are after all animals, programmed to survive and replicate (be violent and fuck, basically). But staying at the level of animals because it is pleasurable is ridiculous. If everyone thought like that, we'd still be living in trees.

What MaxWilder said. If women truly want equality, then stop getting preferential treatment. Men can be objects and noone cares, but when it's a woman it's suddenly bad? Hypocrisy.

I was taught that women should be treated equally. What's funny is I'm left thinking -- what is this woman's feelings on the matter? You all, the readers here, are placing your own morals on the point. If this were a man OR woman, it changes your point of view. Well, in a truly neutral environment, the only thing that really matters is viewpoint of the "table" involved.

If you really want equality then take YOUR PERSONAL feelings out of the matter (stop trying to empathize with the woman in the video since you have no way to know what she's thinking) and consider that the "table" is a man. If you find you have the same "disgusted" and "objectification" feelings, then at least it's just a sexual deviation you don't like, and not a demeaning video, which in my opinion, is not.

Women have spent countless centures being objects to men. It's part of the primal nature, otherwise we basically would not exist on this planet. The funny thing is that if women truly want to be equals then you really need to take all the sexism in stride ........ you know, like men.

^ Interesting, I didn't know that so I looked it up.

http://starryskies.com/articles/2007/10/primal-future-moon.html

In summary:

Earth's rotation is being slowed by the friction between the oceans and the ocean floor

This will continue until (in a few billion years) Earth's tidal bulges align with an imaginary line running through the center of the Earth/Moon system

Earth's rotation will then cease slowing down.

when it does happen: Earth's day will be a month long (960 hours a day) and our month will be forty days long

those on the Moon looking back at Earth would see the same face of Earth – just as now we see only one face of the Moon.

to anyone still on Earth, the Moon will have moved far enough away that it appears much smaller

there would be no more solar eclipses

>> ^Constitutional_Patriot:
>> ^thepinky:
Every Mormon I have ever come into contact with has been extremely kind, happy, and helpful. I think that the media and other ignorant people choose to focus on the most unusual elements of the religion, take them out of context, and call them crazy. It is incredibly bigoted, intolerant, ignorant, and unkind. I think it is EXTREMELY unfair to compare the LDS church with Scientology. Ridiculous, in fact. For goodness' sake, they're good people. They're just misunderstood.

If you ever get a chance, read the biography of Howard Hughes.. particularly the last few chapters (if you don't have time to read the whole thing)... he hired only mormons to attend to his needs near the end of his life (you see only a glimpse of them in the DiCaprio movie near the end). He hired them because of their "principles", because they never drank, never smoked and were supposedly saintly people. This couldn't have been anything further from the truth. They ended up keeping him bed-ridden with sores from such treatment, kept him constantly deleriously drugged up, they drained his checking account quite often and these are only the documented parts. This was a group of them that actually conspired to defraud, degrade his health and deceive those that had previously interacted with him.
This isn't to say that Mormons are more prone to this type of behavior than any other set of people, from any other set of religious beliefs.
The fact is - they are people. People are flawed. Religion is flawed. From what I've seen, religion cannot truly alter the basic primal instincts that people have. I cannot trust someone merely because they are a member of a specific religion. In fact.. from my experience investigating many churches in my youth I find all religious members suspect to potentially unpredictable behavior.


Yes, I totally agree with you. I didn't mean to sound as if Mormons are universally good people. You get bad eggs in every group of people. Mormons are just as human as anybody. However, I have seen an unusual tendency for Mormons to be the sort of church-goers that go every week and that practice what they preach for the most part. This is not true in many cases, but in the majority that I have personally witnessed. Thanks for calling me out on that.

>> ^thepinky:
Every Mormon I have ever come into contact with has been extremely kind, happy, and helpful. I think that the media and other ignorant people choose to focus on the most unusual elements of the religion, take them out of context, and call them crazy. It is incredibly bigoted, intolerant, ignorant, and unkind. I think it is EXTREMELY unfair to compare the LDS church with Scientology. Ridiculous, in fact. For goodness' sake, they're good people. They're just misunderstood.


If you ever get a chance, read the biography of Howard Hughes.. particularly the last few chapters (if you don't have time to read the whole thing)... he hired only mormons to attend to his needs near the end of his life (you see only a glimpse of them in the DiCaprio movie near the end). He hired them because of their "principles", because they never drank, never smoked and were supposedly saintly people. This couldn't have been anything further from the truth. They ended up keeping him bed-ridden with sores from such treatment, kept him constantly deleriously drugged up, they drained his checking account quite often, forced him to sign a will that they wrote and these are only the documented parts. This was a group of them that actually conspired to defraud, degrade his health and deceive those that had previously interacted with him.

This isn't to say that Mormons are more prone to this type of behavior than any other set of people, from any other set of religious beliefs.

The fact is - they are people. People are flawed. Religion is flawed. From what I've seen, religion cannot truly alter the basic primal instincts that people have. I cannot trust someone merely because they are a member of a specific religion. In fact.. from my experience investigating many churches in my youth I find all religious members suspect to potentially unpredictable and damaging behavior.

I think it's silly to take this "high ground" when dealing with nature on such a primal level. Dude, if your life is on the line: Cut the f*cker. Law of the jungle Article 56 § 3.5.4, paragraph 1 clearly permits the taking of another animal's life when one's life is being threatened. Later paragraphs go on to describe specifics about killing in the name of sustenance.

EVE Online is about the only game I consistently play right now.

Some older favorites:

Neverwinter Nights and Expansion packs (One of the best game experiences ever especially Hordes of Underdark, NWN 2 was disappointing)

Sacred (This was like Diablo set in a larger open world, I actually finished this game 3 times)

Counter-Strike 1.3 (after that and Source it wasn't the same at all - The AK47 was so awesome in this version)

Quake 1, 2, 3. - Bots, Multiplayer and gibs. Nuff said.

Unreal Tournament (The original is still the best, UT3 was a huge consoley disappointment)

Freelancer 1 & 2 (Anyone remember pulling GTVA space patrols in a nebula? It was my own personal BSG)

Transport Tycoon Deluxe (Laying roads, train tracks, air and sea transport routes, was never so much fun, Locomotion was a huge disappointment)

Jagged Alliance 1 & 2 (Squad control mercs! Ivan Dolvich was hilarious)

Ivan Dolvich: You do not speak Russian? Ah, I miss days when Russia was at war with everybody.
Ivan Dolvich: [Speaking Russian; after killing an enemy in a rather brutal way] And that's why my nephew is an alcoholic.
Ivan Dolvich: [Speaking Russian; upon finding a weapon he likes] If I keep quiet, I will be able to keep it for myself!

Soldner (Like a JA clone set in a pulpish WW2 setting)

UFO: Alien Unknown (Oh my god this game was so scary, especially when you started getting Psiattacks from the aliens, still unrivaled today, even though countless companies tried direct copies, I didn't really like X-Com because of the underwater setting)

Heroes of Might & Magic 3 (I loved the 2D graphics, the newer 3D one isn't as magical nor did it have near the amount of units/artifacts/heroes as HMM3)

Rise of Nations (This was really one of the best and most enjoyable RTS games I ever played)

Total Annihilation (Visceral, primal RTS combat with robots, Supreme Commander lost that magic touch)

Morrowind (Oblivion was good but not as good as Morrowind which had more of an open ended feel, and not as consoley based as Oblivion)

I would say my favorite genre is FPS, though so far all am looking forward to is Fallout 3 and Jagged Alliance 3/3D/4 (if it ever makes it), I was looking forward to a shooter that was said to cover all the weapons from the 20th to 21st centuries following a familial history but I forgot the name, it had a really cool trailer too.

I think our society's a bit messed up over this. We can't look on this seemingly well adjusted family without disgust, but we can go to the store, buy some other animal's breast milk that has been forcibly expelled by giant sucking machines

Right on! It's no suprise that human milk is better for humans than cow's milk. There's nothing wrong with extended breastfeeding between consenting people.

What a great Sift. I agree that the kids seem pretty well-adjusted. Much more so than the ones I see in the candy-aisle at K-mart.

I see so many kids in grocery stores being abused by parents who threaten to abandon them or hit them.

creepy

Creepy is just an all-purpose insult used to express xenophobia and ignorance on the part of the person uttering the word.

Dag, I pretty much agree with what you're saying there and I don't disagree with the fact that it's 'natural'. The problem I have is that we aren't a primal society, these kids are gonna be faced with problems as a result of this facet of their upbringing, whether it be in school or later life. I think it's short-sighted of the woman to encourage or even bow down to her 8 year old's demands when she's well aware of the society we live in.

All those resultant problems, if any, would be the result of the baseless social stigma, not the act itself.