*western

I got interested in that question based on the Elder Scrolls series. Morrowind had a basically static world, Oblivion was basically entirely scaled to the player, and Skyrim is scaled to the player but within a min/max range.

To me, Morrowind was great because it could put appropriately powerful rewards in difficult (or just plain obscure) areas. Oblivion in particular was bad at making leveling feel like a treadmill because every time you leveled up as the player, pretty much every enemy would be that much more powerful also. Skyrim was better about that since an area would generally set its difficulty scale based on the first time you visited it, so you could leave and come back later if it was too tough, but it still felt a little off.

Another associated problem is how loot gets influenced by those leveled lists. In Skyrim, loot in containers and in the inventory of leveled enemies generally scales, but loot sitting out in the open in the game world generally doesn't. Which is really annoying, because all generic loot pretty much everywhere ends up being crappy low-level iron. God forbid there's some steel, elven, or dwarven gear in places where it would totally make sense to be (say, dwarven gear in dwarven ruins) that you might venture into before that gear becomes "level appropriate".


In a related issue, one beef that I have with general RPG mechanics is how they all feel the need to make you drastically more powerful at level 5 compared to level 1, and again at level 10 compared to level 5, and so on. By the time you're near the level cap, you're probably 100-1000 times as powerful as you were at level 1, which gives a good sense of accomplishment but just doesn't seem realistic, and leads to this problem with fixed difficulty or level scaling. Western RPGs (boiling back to pen and paper DnD rules) certainly aren't great about this, but JRPGs are completely ridiculous about it, which is pretty much why Final Fantasy 3(6) was the last one that I enjoyed. In my adulthood, I just can't handle them -- even going back and trying to play FF3 that I *loved* way back when.

I'd like to see more games where you get more skills, polish, and versatility as you progress, but overall you aren't more than 3-5 times as powerful at max level as you were at the beginning. Mount and Blade is one of the few games I can think of that comes close to that.

Twins aren't genetically identical, even at birth. They begin separating from each other genetically when the zygote splits. Environmental factors determine how genes are expressed, and those factors are not identical. That makes twin studies a piss poor method of gene study. All it can tell you is how much the environment might effect their expression over time, and they aren't very good at even that.
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/twins/

Now that genetic testing is cheap, we're finding out most identical twins aren't identical at all. Proper gene testing doesn't assume twins are identical clones for life, it actually disproved that hypothesis. The space study with twins showed that in under a year their genes permanently diverged a full 7% (with a larger temporary change initially that lowered as they returned to similar environments).
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-twins-study-confirms-preliminary-findings


I feel that people often misuse mistaken assumptions to validate their prejudices. If the science isn't clear and validated, using it against others is improper in the extreme.

Discriminating against people for their legal, culturally accepted, natural behavior makes the person doing the discriminating an asshole. Homosexuality is quite present in nature, is now culturally accepted in western cultures, and is legal. Tolerance is a learned behavior I wish was taught better, especially by churches.

The other problem is, even in a western nation 50% of births are accidental, I'm not really sure how that can be prevented short of sterilization, but the lefties would never allow that to happen.

Gotta tackle the issue from every side imo.

Absolutely agree with you, but if I can't convince someone intelligent like you to eat a plant-based diet, I don't like my chances att convincing Sharleen and Damien from having 5 kids :-)

The other thing is if you look at the consumption in Western civilisation, we use somethng like 80% of the resources, even though our populations are the smallest. Which would suggest it's mostly lifestyle related.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/taibbi-russiagate-trump-putin-mueller-and-targeting-dissent-w517486

Not as informative as Greenwald's recent piece on Hamilton 68, but you just gotta love Taibbi's style.

"By an extraordinary coincidence, virtually all the "anti-system" movements and candidates that so terrified the political establishment two years ago have since been identified as covert or overt Russian destabilization initiatives, puppeteered from afar by the diabolical anti-Western dictator, Vladimir von Putin-Evil."


And on this decade's most effective propaganda effort so far, the Hamilton 68 dashboard:

"That these people now are being upheld as heroes of liberalism is incredible. Only a few short years ago they were widely derided as the very dumbest people in the country, raving paranoiacs who humped every false lead from Niger to Ahmed Chalabi's hotel suite in order to justify invasions, torture, secret prisons and the establishment of a monstrous, intractable, and illegal surveillance regime. And now we're letting these same people dominate every news cycle when this time, years early, they're already admitting they might be wrong?"

Your absolutely right that characterising an entire generation as the 'same' is flawed.

However, I also believe there is more to the whole 'entitled millenials' view than just the bias of 'those darned kids again'.

I think the lumping of generational groups is just a miswording and but reading of the problems facing society at different times. Baby-Boomers as a generation were just people, same as millenials, same as anyone else. The thing is, kids born between 1910 and 1930 grew up in a world at war. Baby boomers grew up in a post world war/cold war era. The societal problems that shaped those times and people still existed, so dismissing the problems as just perception or bias isn't necessarily a good idea.

I've been out of high school 20+ years, and the notion of participation ribbons for everyone was already starting then. The notion that losing or winning isn't important, even if you lost because you were lazy, or won because of years of hard work was already starting. The problem of basically denying hard parts of the real world has been building for 20 years, and the current generation has been buried even deeper in it.

For anyone born in Canada or the USA to cry that no amount of hard work, talent or anything else can help them get ahead and that the system must be changed to help them is insidious. When 80-90% of everyone born in Canada or the USA will never know real hunger, never face homelessness, never have a warlord burn and destroy everything they own, complaining about the inherent injustice of being born where you were as a Canadian or American is just wrong.

The ideology that has grown up in the western world over the last 20+ years has the stink of the rich, entitled world we've enjoyed here. We have a society so removed from hardship, that hardship is working 10 hours a day, 5 days a week to lead a life more comfortable than 90% of the world.

It's not millenials, it is however the society that millenials are growing up in(so all of us).

Not everybody realizes that song was based on a real person.


http://calgarysun.com/2016/09/24/how-a-ping-pong-ball-act-excited-both-western-canadian-bar-patrons-and-the-rcmp/wcm/a58db82c-da97-4812-a3c9-c5e85d49c
4d3

Ummm, after thoughtlessly upvoting your comment, I followed the link you posted and it's definitely not the place they are at. According to the YT description on the video, it's an abandoned mine shaft somewhere in the western US, not in West Virginia.

They still don't seem like my kind of people, but not as bad as your comment makes them out to be.

I am open to rational answers, but not hokum. Using mythos to prove mythos is no answer.
I've said I'm not open to suspending rationality or sanity, you say that means I won't listen to you....um.....

The entirety of Christianity hinges on one thing; the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a historical event and can be investigated that way. Jesus Christ is a real person who lived 2000 years ago in Israel. This isn't mythos and there is good evidence to believe it happened.

How do you know there's no FSM? I've seen exponentially more evidence of his existence than Yahweh's. I've eaten pasta. I absolutely believe in it more than Yahweh, but that's not a high bar.
Edit: How do you know there's no Allah? Odin? Zeus? Mythra? Mot? Cthulhu?

We both know that the fsm is a joke religion invented to mock Christianity.

The scripture tells us that men have worshiped other gods for thousands of years, but that what they worship are demons. So I believe those beings exist, but they aren't what they claim to be. One of Satans primary tools to deceive mankind is false religion. He provides supernatural confirmation of these religions. There is a desire in mans heart to worship God, and it gets corrupted so that man is willing to worship just about anything. In western culture, men idolize money, materialism, carnal lusts, even themselves. Our idols are less obvious but they are still idols.

One more time, my questions were 1.why is God's word so easily misstated, misunderstood, misidentified, misused, confused, and used for evil and hate? (Edit: especially given that properly interpreting it is allegedly the only way to escape eternal torture, seems like a set up.)

Any truth is easily misstated, misunderstood, misidentified, misused, confused, and used for evil and hate. This isn't a phenomenon unique to the scriptures; this is the reality of living in a fallen world. Corrupt men distort truth for their own gain. Look at the political situation in our country; how is what politicians do different from what prosperity preachers do? It really isn't.

The fact is that the gospel is very simple to understand; even a child could understand it, and they do. Gods word is very clear about our need for salvation and how to obtain it. It's man who overcomplicates it, distorts it for gain, or deliberately conceals the truth. Trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and believe He was raised from the dead. You don't need to be a theologian to understand that.

2.why is disbelief apparently worse than murder, rape, and slavery and so not covered by Jesus's sin erasing sacrifice and the only sin that's totally unforgivable.

How did you come to the conclusion that Jesus didn't die for unbelief? We all have unbelief that needs forgiveness which we receive by repentance. His atonement is not automatically transferred to everyone; the condition of receiving forgiveness is to believe. If you don't believe you won't receive forgiveness because you failed to meet the condition, not because unbelief is worse than murder necessarily. Dying without forgiveness for your sin is the problem, not that it can't be forgiven, but it can't be forgiven without repentance. It's kind of like this:

Let's say you had cancer and the only cure was in Los Angeles. You had no way to get there but God sent you a car to get you to Los Angeles and get the cure. When it arrived you didn't believe it would take you there so you didn't get in. A short time later you died of cancer.

So what was the reason you died? It was your unbelief that stopped you receiving the cure, but it was your cancer that killed you. In the same way it is your unbelief that keeps you from coming to Jesus Christ for forgiveness, so you will die in your sin.

I am interested in and open to an actual answer to either or both if you have one. It won't make me believe, but it might help me understand those who do a little better.

I'm happy to answer your questions newtboy..I just didn't want it to turn into another internet argument. I appreciate your candor

I don't think Utah even has medical marijuana yet. They have some really strict liquor/drug laws. It's like the bible belt of the western U.S. Still, absolutely gorgeous for sure.

I can give you a description of the bit and my opinion.

A Tom Thumb bit is jointed in the middle and has shanks for leverage. So it has a dual action. When light pressure is used it works on the gums and corners of the mouth. When the reigns are pulled harder the jaw is squeezed while the shanks multiply the force and the center joint folds upward to apply pressure to the roof of the mouth. It's kind of like the volume going from 1 to 11.

Uses:
In theory it should act like a traditional Western bit with the added advantage of rotating the shanks independently...so you can make pressure changes on each side of the mouth independently. In actual practice, it pinches the horses lip in this situation and horses tend to react by tossing their head up or holding their head in an unnaturally high position. With a strong pull it becomes extremely severe. Using it requires a very light hand.

I have used a Tom Thumb successfully with a well trained horse that required no head control but had developed a bad habit of testing his rider by picking up his gate and then bolting. The bit allowed me to ride with no hand but when the horse stretched his neck to take control he ran into the bit. When he relaxed back to the correct position, the pressure was gone. Eventually he didn't want to cause his own discomfort and once he'd broken his bad habits the bit wasn't necessary.

In my opinion, the Tom Thumb appears to check a lot of boxes but in reality it does few of them well. It can work for the right horse, with the right rider, in the right circumstances.

Roy is clearly an inexperienced rider and his personality demands that he assert control, even when he's out of his depth. He's riding a gaited horse (I think it's a Tennessee Walker but my daughter disagrees) and he seems to be trying to make it move like a Quarter Horse. My guess is he's trying to ride in like a cowboy but the horse naturally moves like pretty princess horse. Chaos ensues.

I hope that makes sense. I tried to avoid horse-people terms. If something's unclear or if anyone feels I'm wrong, then I welcome comments.

There was an interesting comment on this vid by Valentyn Mykolajovych, from Antonov,

Этот борт 13.01.1989 года во время взлета в Адене (Йемен) из-за преждевременной уборки шасси потерпел аварию. В течение 8 месяцев восстанавливали на месте и 12.12.1989 года своим ходом перегнан на капитальный ремонт в Киев. С тех он у нас, в КБ "Антонов".
Практически все транспортники имеют свои аналоги (Ан-12 и С-130, Ан-124 и С-5), а для Ан-22 и Ан-225 аналогов нет.
Спасибо за видео, TopFelya!

This aircraft crashed during takeoff on 13.01.1989 in Aden (Yemen) due to premature retraction of the landing gear. Within 8 months it was repaired on the spot and on 12/12/1989, under its own power, was returned to Kiev for major repairs. Since then, it is with us, at the Antonov Design Bureau.
Almost all cargo planes have their western analogues (An-12 and C-130, An-124 and C-5), but there are no analogues for the An-22 or An-225.
Thanks for the video, TopFelya!

The USSR is gone. No one is trying to guard western industry against communist overthrow anymore. That time is long gone.




Imagine person A pushing person B, and person B pushes back, and the news runs around screaming that B pushed A. That's basically our simplistic news coverage about Ukraine.

Feel free to read about the 2014 coup : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution
I take no issue with Ukrainians giving their old government a swift kick out the door (and for understandable reason - such as corruption). However, with that comes the usual scapegoating of the undesirables. Would it have been better that Russia let groups like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Sector ravage ethnic Russians just across their border?

Crimea has been Russia from 1779 till ~1990, when it happened to end up under Ukrainian control after the USSR broke up. People living there are also Russian citizens, born either while it was still Russia, or to Russian parents.
Take a look:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Crimea
Then ask yourself, considering the right wing neo nazi anti-ethnic-Russian shitstorm in Ukraine, where would the Crimeans rather be?

Russia isn't a saint. It's acting in self interest. It's also not a villain. Things happen for reasons.

The treaty you refer to is : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
The link explains how it can be read to fault either the U.S. (for coup involvement) or Russia (for subsequent conflict involvement).

Just to put things in perspective :
Imagine Russia getting involved in a coup in Mexico or Canada. Or imagine Russia placing missile launchers in Cuba. Do you think that we would be as cordial to Russia as Russia has been to us?
So Russia tries to help a candidate who prefers friendly relations, that's hardly the sign of a committed adversary.

I mean, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I shouldn't think and analyze the situation from multiple perspectives with consideration for circumstance and motivation, and instead I should just accept what the news has on 24/7 repeat. /s





Collusion is not a crime because /literally/ it is not a crime. You will not find the word "collusion" mentioned as an offense in any criminal code. It's only on TV because people started using that phrase to assert that the campaign and Russia were acting independently (which is irrelevant, they don't need to coordinate to break the law).


-scheherazde

In Canada, School funding is based on head count and not on housing taxes.
Interest rates are pre-set by banks but to the best of my knowledge, the same rates are given to everyone - there is no race-bias on who gets which loan rate.

Also, If I was to buy a house, anywhere, suburbs or not, my ability, as a white male is exactly the same as any other racial profile family. As someone who didn't have parents subsidize my income or schooling, my chances of owning is exactly the same as anyone else. In this, I feel that part of his argument isn't exactly accurate.

I'll even go a step further to say that, in fact, most immigrants to western Canada have more wealth than white people, and are buying out the housing market, most sight unseen, and above market value. In the Greater Vancouver area, most white people are now a minority, because they can't compete financially with immigrants and are being forced out of Vancouver.