ok, i'll do my best:

"It's where the program does the animation for you using physics (or other) algorithms. As the artist, you place a "flag" in the scene, and attach it to a "pole" then tell the program there's a "45 mph wind from the East".
Then you hit "Play" and you get a movie of a flag waving in the wind."

this is called a sim, and yes it's a type of procedural animation but it doesn't replace some kind of "classical" method of animating. sims are used for all kinds of things: particles, cloth, fur/hair/feathers, crowds, fluid, rigid body destruction, etc, etc. the artists who do this are not animators, they're FX artists and it isn't as simple as plugging in "45 mph wind from the east". not even close. for something seemingly that simple you're dialing in things like direction, turbulence, gravity, plus the cloth properties. once you have your settings, you sim it, which can take days on a render farm for complex sims. if that sim is approved then it goes to lighting, gets put into the scene, has textures/materials/shaders applied, and then gets rendered, which can take another several days on a render farm depending on the complexity. these sims are the only way to get realistic animations for these types of materials. and there are generally many versions made at this stage to get the sim right, fix broken frames, fix intersecting, get the lighting and textures/materials/shaders working right, etc. THEN it goes to the compositing dept for a couple dozen more versions.




"As opposed to regular animation, which can be thought of as glorified stop-motion animation. Each single piece moved by you, individually, for each frame of video."

regular animation is like stop motion except it's not every frame (it's interpolated between keyframes) and is for character animation.

anim and FX are 2 different departments and often use 2 different software packages.

mocap is also not handled by the anim dept. it would be done by match move and/or tech anim.




"You create a flag and a pole. Then the next frame you bend it here, here, here, and here, then click forward to the next frame, and bend it a bit more here, little less here, invert this bend, add another, make this corner whip a bit."

no one in there right mind would do this, it's completely impractical, and would look like complete shit.




"It basically allows less technically savvy artists play in a world where only "nerds" used to play."

the FX people are way more nerds and technical than anim people. you need to be technically savvy for every dept. but the real nerds and really technically savvy people work on pipeline who were probably heavily involved in this project building custom toolsets for it.




"Really kind of lazy way of animating."

no, it's fucking hard, requires a lot of knowledge, a lot of people, a lot of cpu horsepower, is used all the time to get high quality animations, is a collection of several departments other than animation, and is used in conjunction with animation.

It's where the program does the animation for you using physics (or other) algorithms. As the artist, you place a "flag" in the scene, and attach it to a "pole" then tell the program there's a "45 mph wind from the East".
Then you hit "Play" and you get a movie of a flag waving in the wind.

As opposed to regular animation, which can be thought of as glorified stop-motion animation. Each single piece moved by you, individually, for each frame of video.

You create a flag and a pole. Then the next frame you bend it here, here, here, and here, then click forward to the next frame, and bend it a bit more here, little less here, invert this bend, add another, make this corner whip a bit.

It basically allows less technically savvy artists play in a world where only "nerds" used to play.

So, basically here in this video, it's like those simulations of water breaking out of a ball and splashing all over the place. Only instead of a ball, you have human-shaped containers being moved around through mo-cap and having things attached to their shells or filled with other things.

Really kind of lazy way of animating.

Did the one guy say, "I'm about to run out of gas"? So let's see: driving towards a powerful tornado with your head out the window while debris is whipping around and you're running low on gas so you can't get out of the way if it turns on you or an injury requires you to book it to a hospital. Seems totally safe to me!

With that said, that is some awesome footage and one of the few tornado videos where the "stormchasers" aren't either crying, swearing, or screaming. I might actually be able to show this to my kid with sound for once!

I am super amused that the guy on the sub whipped out a snow brush to clear show off the tower...

Testing the new whip has been added as a related post - related requested by blacklotus90 on that post.

@RedSky

First, if it were up to me, you could take over as Minister of Finance in this country tomorrow. Our differences seem miniscule compared to what horrendous policies our last three MoF have pushed. The one prior, ironically, was dubbed the most dangerous man in Europe by The Sun.

We're in agreement on almost everything you mentioned in your last comment, so I'll focus on what I perceive differently.

First, I'd differentiate between fiscal stimulus and fiscal spending, the former being a situational application of the latter. As you said, fiscal stimulus during an economic crisis tends to be inadequate with regards to our macroeconomic objectives. You can neither whip out plans for major investments at a whim nor can you mobilize the neccessary resources quickly enough to make a difference and still be reasonable efficient. Not to mention that it only affects certain parts of the economy (construction, mostly), leaving others completely in the wind. So I'm with you on that one, it's a terribly inefficient and ineffective approach.

Automatic stabilizers work magnificently in this regard, but they barely take any pressure from the lower wage groups, especially if unemployment benefits come with a metric ton of strings attached, as is the case in Germany. A basic income guarantee might work, but that's an entirely different discussion.

The problem I see with merely relying on reasonable automatic stabilizers in the form of payments is that they do put a floor into demand, but do very little to tackle the problem of persistent unemployment due to a lack of jobs. As useful as training and education are, the mere number of highly educated people forced to work mundane jobs tells me that, at best, it doesn't work, and at worst pushes a systemic problem onto the individual, leading to immense pressure. Not to mention the psychological effects of being unemployed when employment is tauted as a defining attribute of a proper person -- aka the demonization of the unemployed.

It's still somewhat decent in Australia, but in Europe... it's quite a horrible experience.

Anyway, my point is that I'd rather see a lot more fiscal spending (permanent!) in the shape of public sector jobs. A lot of work cannot be valued properly by the market; should be done without the expectation of a return of investment (hospitals, anyone?); occurs in sectors of natural monopolies -- all of that should be publicly run. A job guarantee, like your fellow countryman Bill Mitchell advocates quite clearly, might be an approach worth trying out. Economy in the shit? More people on the public payroll, at rather low (but living wage!) wages. Do it at the county/city level and you can create almost any kind of job. If the private sector wants those people instead, they'd have to offer better working conditions. No more blackmail through the fear of unemployment -- you can always take a public job, even if it is at a meagre pay.

I should probably have mentioned that I don't buy into the notion of a stable market. From where I am standing, it's inherently unstable, be it through monopolies/oligopolies, dodging of laws and regulations (Uber), impossibility to price-in externalities (environmental damage most of all) or plain, old cost-cutting leading to a system-wide depression of demand. I'm fine with interfering in the market wherever it fails to deliver on our macroeconomic objectives -- which at this point in time is almost everywhere, basically.

Healthcare is all the rage these days, thanks to the primaries. I'd take the publicly-run NHS over the privately-run abomination in the US any day of the week. And that's after all the cuts and privatizations of the last two decades that did a horrible number on the NHS. Fuck ATOS, while we're at it.

Same for the railroad: the pre-privatization Bundesbahn in Germany was something to be proud of and an immeasurable boost of both the economy and the general standard of living.

In the mid/long run, the effects of automation and climate change-induced migration will put an end to the idea of full employment, but for the time being, there's still plenty of work to be done, plenty of idle resources to be employed, and just nobody to finance it. So why not finance it through the printing press until capacity is reached?

As for the Venezuela comparison: I don't think it fits in this case. Neither does Weimar Germany, which is paraded around quite regularly. Both Venezuela and Weimar Germany had massive supply-side problems. They didn't have the production capacity nor the resources to meet the demand they created by spending money into circulation. If an economy runs at or above its capacity, any additional spending, wherever it comes from, will cause inflation. But both Europe and the US are operating faaar below capacity in any measurable metric. You mentioned LRAS yourself. I think most estimates of it, as well as most estimates of NAIRU, are off quite significantly so as to not take the pressure off the wage slaves in the lowest income sector. You need mass unemployment to keep them in line.

As you said, the participation rate is woefully low, so there's ample space. And I'd rather overshoot and cause a short spike in inflation than remain below potential and leave millions to unneccessary misery.

Given the high level of private debt, there will be no increase in spending on that front. Corporations don't feel the need to invest, since demand is down and their own vaults are filled to the brim with cash. So if the private sector intends to net save, you either have to run a current account surplus (aka leech demand from other countries) or a fiscal deficit. Doesn't work any other way, sectoral balances always sum up to zero, by definition. If we want to reduce the dangerous levels of private debt, the government needs to run a deficit. If we don't want to further increase the federal debt, the central bank has to hand the cash over directly, without the issuance of debt through the treasury.

As for the independant central bank: you can only be independant from either the government or the private sector, not both. Actually, you can't even be truly independant from either, given that people are still involved, and people have ideologies and financial ties.

Still, if an "independant" central bank is what you prefer, Adair Turner's new book "Between Debt and the Devil" might be worth a read. He's a proponent of 100% reserve banking, and argues for the occasional use of the printing press -- though controlled by an inflation-targeting central bank. According to him, QE is pointless and in order to bring nominal demand up to the level we want, we should have a fiscal stimulus financed by central bank money. The central bank controls the amount, the government decides on what to spend it on.

Not how I would do it, but given his expertise as head of the Financial Services Authority, it's quite refreshing to hear these things from someone like him.

@bareboards2
yeah.i do not understand why he was hanging around while she talked shit.

it appears he may have messed her stuff up,and was looking for something that may have dropped.

we really do not know though.could be anything.could be he gave her boobs a goose for all we know.

we DO know that she was verbally abusing him.

i know i would have walked away.i have encountered women like this all through my life.apologizing just gets you a litany of new insults,and as long as you remain in their vicinity...the insults will only continue and get even more derogatory.

walking away is the best policy.

the majority of times that sufficed to appease their inner rage demon.maybe they would throw a few zingers at my back,but i never really gave a shit.more power to her..they are just words flying out of an entitled little girl who cant behave like an adult.

but...

on a few occasions.
the girl would follow right behind me,and continue to berate and harass me.possibly seeing my retreat as a sign of weakness.i really dont know.what i DO know,is that is a blatant sign of stupidity to take your 5"3" 110lb ass and try to jam it into my face as if you were rhonda rousey.

i have never hit a woman.
but i will not allow a woman to put her hands on me,especially when she has been verbally abusive and aggressive with me.

so the girls who have thought it totally ok to escalate the situation with physical violence,i have always responded in the same fashion: they get one shot.ONE.and then i whip around (and guys who have gotten into fights understand this) and in the most threatening and physically imposing manner,plainly let her know "ok thats ONE.go ahead and hit me again.i fucking DARE you.go ahead and hit me again and see what happens.because if you hit me again you are taking the place of a man,and AS a man i will knock you the fuck out".

i actually learned that from my dad.
one of the kindest and most gentle people you will have ever met,but his advice worked like a charm.

can you guess how many of those girls went for hit # 2?

thats right...none.

ya know.people get angry.
people can misunderstand a situation and react angrily.
humans will encounter conflict throughout our lives,and it is a testament to wisdom,intelligence and patience how we deal with those conflicts.

and there is never a time where it is ok to put your hands on another person,except for in self-defense.

so when a woman puts her hands on a man.
i dont care what level the rage meter is at,she should never put her hands on him.

for a few reasons:
1.its wrong.
2.you dont get a free pass because you own a uterus.
3.violence is never the proper choice for conflict resolution.
4.and most important.would you ever in your life walk up to a grizzly bear with a stick and start poking him? would you cry and whine about the unfairness of it all when that bear rips your face off?

use a little common sense and everything will be fine.

and did ya'all catch this womans glee?
the mere idea of her male friends killing this dude made her flush with excitement.that is a tad disturbing,but expected with such low quality females such as these.

experienced a bunch of women in that category as well.

but thats a story for another day.

simply put:this woman escalated the situation by making it physical and got popped in the mouth.
and thats all it was..a pop.
got her attention though didnt it?

so advice to all my lady friends here on the sift.
you have a right to your anger,your outrage and your indignation.
you do NOT have the right to be hitting,smacking or punching guys willy nilly without consequences.

and while i agree with BB (and others) that the dude should have just walked away,i will not put that responsibility solely on him.how is it HIS responsibility to control this womans actions.she hit.she got popped.
end of story.

It's a difficult thing to really justify or demonize because sex is a head game, a dance but also a match of submissiveness versus dominance; it can become violent and abusive through the ebb and flow of permission and denial. One moment I'm smacking her ass during sex, after a year of smacking her ass, she needs to be spanked before sex even begins, and now 10 years later there's whips and clamps and shackles. It all started with a mildly amusing smack to the ass that over time became a mutual fetish.

All of that extreme abuse porn is a matter of course, just like the secret fetish in a relationship starts with something innocent then leads to something semi-professional. This is the end result of a fetish that started with Deep Throat in the '70s opening the world to oral sex. Now it's facial abuse. She doesn't need a deep throat, now she just needs to undergo a hazing.

Will regulation change an industry piloted entirely by desire and sex starved user demand? Or would the culture simply evolve around the regulations?

Japan blurs out genitals, so what happens? The culture evolves around the restrictions and now we have a thriving bukkake subgenre. You want cum in eyes? Niche. Cum in hair? Niche. Cum on teeth? For real though, the focus is on teeth. We don't even need genitals now! Just pick a spot on the body and then ejaculate in mass! What a phenomenon.

Niches form and when they trend, that's when you end up with a popular site like facial abuse.

But hazing porn exists in the reverse and is also quite popular. Pegging? Come on, where's my face sitting fans? Hey now, there's also a lesbian variety of big assed Brazilian women who abuse skinny blond girls. I don't know what they're saying, but clearly it means something along the lines of dig that white caucausian nose further up my brown latin pussy. One woman is empowered, the other not so much, but she likes it, so... empowered? But who watches it? Men? Surely not women. Well, I know several women who watch the shit out of lesbian domination porn.

I had the absolute pleasure to sit with some really open lesbians and watch lesbian domination porn where the women wrestle each other, and the winner gets to fuck the loser in humiliating and abusive ways. I mean... the topic of empowerment is tough here. If you do porn just own it. Damn. Come on, it's just sex. People just like giving each other a hard time and they're always worrying about the next generation, even though they know humans are all dirty, filthy, sex craved fiends.

I think the most abusive porn I've watched (was sort of forced to watch) was a man having his penis hit with a hammer by a very mean woman. He liked having his penis hit with a hammer for some odd reason.

Yes it is important the field you work in. You are going to spend something like 40% of your waking hours doing it. If you think doubleshifting manual labour under scorching sun and whips is somehow equivalent to 8 hours in an office environment where you answer phones or w/e, you've lost the thread.

You're right that not everyone can change jobs. You grossly exaggerate what is required to do so, however. Yes, changing between highly skilled careers that required a significant amount of specialized knowledge isn't available to all that many people. But you can't even see the miseries of slave labour from the desk of your first career, they're so far away.

You haven't thought too much about infrastructure and what it would mean to have it removed, have you? Of course infrastructure is a benefit to employers, but that's not relevant to how beneficial it is to the 'slaves'. I expect casual access to electricity, water, and world wide communication would have done a lot for slaves, to name just a few of the elements of infrastructure. I'm honestly starting to doubt your sincerity now.

Slaves had good healthcare? Holy shit. I never expected to hear something like that. I don't need to make a counter point here, as you've ridiculed yourself. American healthcare is shitty -- COMPARED with other developed countries. It is light years ahead of anything that has existed outside the jurisdiction of a government.

Yes, the influential have an advantage. Nobody is disputing that. It doesn't utterly negate your rights across the board. You can still travel. You can still educate yourself. You can still own property. You can still address many grievances by wielding your rights. This list goes on and on. ALL things a slave couldn't ever hope to do. I think the rest of your paragraph should have been moved to the protection from hostility section so I'll address it there.

I was addressing hostility from other slaves. You are probably right in that the tribalism it fosters can be very dangerous where countries clash. In a system without government, spats would result in undending blood feuds, all across the territory ruled by the anarchy, whereas under a state, if they happen across borders they can erupt into something far worse.

I don't agree with the way the US has handled the extremist muslim situation that they mid-wifed in the middle east. But are you going to tell me that you're less safe, now, even after all the alluded too transgressions, than some rural farmer in South Sudan, who is effectively living without any guaranteed rights?

I'm definitely for more compassion and socialism than seen in modern US policy, so I'm not sure what your point is. Are you trying to claim that policies on slave plantations were more generous towards the slaves than our current policies are towards us?

Let's just say that I'm loathe to accept an unsourced opinion than medieval peasantry lead better lives than the average government-laden citizen nowadays. I'm sure there are some points on which they did better. Superstition, sickness, famine, war, flooding. We honestly don't have anything that even compares to these in the modern world. If you could link it or something though, I'd love to read it. It sounds interesting.

These posts are getting too long.

Maybe you're right, but to me that didn't sound like jubilation or delight. It sounded like awe and adrenaline mixed into shock. I even took their decision to "go down" at the end as a hint that they may have been going to try to *help* anyone that was caught closer to the blast(s).


I don't mean this to be a "cool story bro" or "internet tough guy" thing, but: About a year ago there was a house fire (pretty roaring fire, but limited to 1 room) across the street from me. Nobody was home, but I didn't know that at the time. When I saw it, verbally my brain went to mush -- I was just saying "oh shit" about like these guys, over and over. But, the adrenaline and thinking that someone might be stuck in the house whipped me into action. I ended up putting out a good chunk of the fire with hose and buckets before the fire department got there about 15 mins later, and the firemen later said that it may well have spread out of control if I hadn't gotten a partial jump on it.

BUT, in my adrenaline fueled shock, I had forgotten to put on shoes, and had cut up my bare feet a bit by running around on glass that the fire had broken out of a window. Plus, I had rather stupidly been pumping in water via hose and bucket, while standing in a puddle, next to a house that still had mains power going into it...

After the event, my wife specifically said that I had sounded "weird" and not like myself, and hadn't really been particularly coherent in verbalizing what I was planning to do. Anyway, due to the shock and surprise, I'm ready to give these dudes the benefit of the doubt with regards to their weird and potentially "inappropriate" sounding voices and statements.

"No, kid, no. Put the toy in your mouth and whip your head around like I am doing. Watch again."

Not only would i be fuming at nearly having been killed, but that kid nearly had his leg whipped off by a high velocity fully stretched bungee. And no one seems in a rush to get out of the damn seat.

There is a small part of me... a part i don't really want to own... that really wanted to see that thing whip around and take that guys arm after he started grabbing and pushing him.

Hard to judge when you don't see what actually happened, but I enjoyed watching the "insane" man intimidate/escort the whiny skaters out of his neighborhood. Their first instinct is to, of course, whip out the phone and record the terrible injustice (pause to chuckle) being perpetrated against them.

I've played airsoft like this for a few years now off an on so feel well enough qualified to comment.

It's largely a matter of range. Most sites allow up to 500fps on snipers (and some american ones go up to 800 or so I believe), but they have a minimum engagement range (usually about 25 meters, presumably more for the silly american ones).

Basically, non automatic sniper rifles are allowed to be significantly more powerful than the 330fps (400 in some countries) other weapons are limited to, but as a result can't be used at short range (that's what pistols and compact SMG's are for!).

If you are close to the minimum range limit and it hits unprotected skin, they sting really badly, enough to draw a little blood sometimes. It's not entirely dissimilar to being whipped by a wet towel, excruciating for about half a second then it tails off to just stinging and swearing.

If it hits your vest, glasses, hat etc. then it wont really hurt at all (but you still felt it you cheating bastards! ), likewise if you are out beyond 50meters or so as the power drops off with range as you'd expect. (My brother can sometimes make shots out to 70-80meters with a VSR but you can barely feel it)

Shoot at point blank and your target can be forgiven for walking over and punching you in the face....right after they stop swearing and get up off the ground. (entirely possible to penetrate exposed skin at that range)

In practice though, trying to storm a building/room vs automatic rifles etc. tends to be far more painful an experience than being sniped. Unless that is someone snipes the inside of your nose sideways on (it hurt as much as you imagine it did).

We also once had a guy knocked clean out by a grenade launcher to the face at point blank . But it was a Co2 powered thing and I believe they aren't allowed inside buildings any more (can't think why).

Re: paintballs, in my much more limited experience, they are waaaaay worse than BB's if they are full power and reasonably close range. Concussions, broken bones and broken skin are all entirely possible (though not likely), but bruises and welts are basically standard issue.

I believe some sites run compressed air guns (rather than Co2) at much lower power levels, so I imagine they are a lot more tolerable.
Paintballers tend to be more on the extreme sports side of things (wheras airsoft tends to be more biased towards military geeks/gamers), and so many sites have a bit of a "pain is weakness leaving the body" attitude to power levels.

In the UK at least the velocity limit for paintballs at competition level is 300fps, for most airsoft sites the limit is 330fps. You only have to look at a BB vs a paintball to see what a discrepancy in energy that equates to!!!