Asking @bobknight33 to engage in some form of cogent argument is as pointless as asking shit to smell nice. Ain't gonna happen.

He comes, he drops a few word bombs, if anyone questions him or attempts any form of intelligent argument he fades into the woodwork. Why? Because he knows if he engages, he loses, because he's got nothing. Just word bombs. To quote the Bard, he is "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

I know, I know, be nice to fellow sifters. @BobKnight will receive a full apology and retraction from me if and when he proves me wrong by presenting a cogent argument instead of his usual disingenuous crap.

does it look nice? sure... does it look next gen? nope. Character lighting seem absent but I think it may have been a gameplay choice to better see players. Building deformation is not new but rare enough that it is always an awesome thing to see. Snow particles are nice, but particles are nothing new. Snow is still just as deformable now as it was the past 5 years. Come back to me when snow banks can be moved. Still to see them while maintaining 60 fps in a shootout is nice.

I kind of had to scoff at how much destruction was afforded a plane cratering in the ground. Plane support seems pointless on a map this small but I imagine the map could become bigger (bigger player modes) later on. In the end though.. looks fun, although more of the same. I am no fan of loot box style power ups hence I havnt played a battlefield in many years, we will see how this one turns out.

It could be just the trailer, but it feels like it's another Avengers movie by the way everyone is acting. It doesn't seem to capture that slow burning badassery of the first one that I was hoping for, or the gritty detective style feel the second.

I really don't need another dumb and pointlessly loud movie to watch, so I hope it's just the way the trailer is cut, and that there is more to it.

To be fair, the electoral college system does make a lot of votes pointless. A Texan Democrat and a Californian Republican don’t really have a say. It’s just a fundamentally broken system and should be scrapped immediately.

There really is no defence for it.

Couldn’t agree more. Unless you’re actually a tribute band, covers are pointless unless you put your own sound on it.

I knew some of this stuff, but not that. But that seems ... problematic.

Cobain's lyrics were pretty famously difficult to understand. I had no clue what most of the lyrics to Smells Like Teen Spirit were until like 20 years after I first heard it when I was 10. Weird Al's parody of the song directly jabs at this, which a whole verse being:

"It's so unintelligible
I just can't get it through my skull
It's hard to bargle nawdle zouss???
With all these marbles in my mouth"


Considering all of that, if you're listening to "Polly" or "Rape Me" but only hearing half of the words, is it any surprise that people might not fully grasp the message? Might even interpret the songs as being pro instead of anti?

I love Nirvana. I agree with the intended messages of their music (at least, to the extent that I understand them). But any time that a band thinks that they don't want fans who don't agree with their "message", I tend to think it is just pointless.

Lots of bands take very clear political / ethical stances in their music. I can like the music without being fully on board with those messages. Even if I'm utterly opposed to them. I can like Rage Against the Machine without fighting the system. I can like System of a Down without being ... psycho? You might be a registered Republican who likes NOFX, or a registered Democrat who likes Kid Rock or Brooks and Dunn.

Basically, if I like what you're doing musically I don't give two shits about what your message is. The extent to which it might make me like you more or less is very negligible.

Japan is planning to film the 2020 Olympics in 8k@120fps and the cameras have been around for 3-4 years now. Multiple companies are working on 16k VR prototypes. 4k is generally pointless unless as I said you simply want "productive" realestate, or sit very close to the display. Because VR displays are so close to your eye the required resolution to match visual acuity is around 16k. My point wasn't anything to do with VR or games but rather the effective viewing distance from the screen(s).

"At 6 meters or 20 feet, a human eye with that performance is able to separate contours that are approximately 1.75 mm apart"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_acuity
6meters isn't a particular helpful distance for this argument but I'm sure you can do the math. 65" 4k display with 0.37mm pixel pitch would require a much closer distance to resolve the image properly. There is an advantage over 1080p but at normal viewing distances you won't be seeing all the detail of 4k.

source? i feel like there's a huge caveat to that. filming, editing, VFX, and displaying 16K is a long, long way away. 4K is already difficult and, honestly, rather pointless.

It's entirely down to viewing distance and the viewer's vision. 4k is pointless at "normal" viewing distances. Whereas you need something like 16k to match visual acuity in VR. Unless you're simply interested in screen real estate.

Seems about right.

I hate "achievements" in games, but one similar system that I actually loved was in Baldur's Gate (1 and 2). In those games, there was a window that tracked all kinds of stats for each of your party members. Stuff like percentage of total party kills, percentage of total damage output, strongest enemy killed, etc. A few games since have done things similar (Borderlands comes to mind), but most seem to opt for this sort of pointless achievement nonsense.

"it's the assault that makes it an assault weapon" LOL. Guess we should start banning assault hammers and assault knives then.

10 yr Assault weapon ban didn't affect gun violence at all.

AR-15s aren't weapons of war, they are used by police agencies across the country.

BTW, the parkland shooter used 10rnd low capacity magazines. Looks like banning 30rnds won't do much good at all, but that's just common sense.

This gun control hysteria is the Republicans' best shot of retaining control of the house and senate. Just look at '94 when they swept into power after the clinton assault weapon ban.


You can't really show any side when you limit each exchange to a 2-sentence sound byte. Pretty pointless.

To be fair, I'm sure that examples could be found of media personalities praising Obama/Clinton for similar stuff that they ragged Bush Sr./Jr. for. Best example off the top of my head might be Bush's "terrible war crimes" vs Obama's "brilliant use of drones".

Now, that all comes with a big disclaimer from me. I disliked Obama's expansion of drone bombing, flip-flop in in-office stance vs campaign stance on whistleblower protection, etc. But, I'd still personally evaluate Bush's, uh, miscues as overwhelmingly worse than Obama's. All I'm saying is that there have certainly been talking heads that have been hypocritical in the other direction before.

That being said, this clip takes it to a whole other level. This isn't nuanced, this is blatant. The only rational explanation is that Fox News simply is that biased, shamelessly so (no surprise to most of us). The problem is that Fox News' audience isn't particularly swayed by rational explanations.

I think clearing that "reality distortion field" is something that takes lots of time and lots of indisputable evidence. That's why I basically hope that Trump gets plenty of leash to try (and fail) to fulfill all of his ridiculous promises and self-hype. Nothing like a pointless and decaying border wall to serve as a reminder to be careful about who's cult of personality you get sucked into...

Well said. I'm fairly comfortably in "weasel" territory, and I don't bitch about it. Too much. Any more.

Actually, in all seriousness, while I am one of those cynical beaten-down types in terms of how much I care about corporate / management expectations, I do take pride in holding myself to rather higher standards than those external ones. That's a good thing, and it means that I can look myself in the mirror and honestly feel like I'm contributing something real, even if the machine that I'm in is apathetic, highly inefficient, and moderately pointless to begin with.

As (the great) Kurt Vonnegut said, "so it goes."

That was quite good.

But man, that 4th issue is a doozy. Learning that "hard work pays off" is difficult when it just really doesn't, at least not anymore. Massive income inequality, zero class mobility, and on and on. We feel like relatively easily replaceable cogs in a relatively pointless machine because WE ARE.

We hear lots of stories about people that manage to buy in, feel like they are doing something important and making a real impact, enjoy some period of good job satisfaction...

...and then all too often, they end up looking like saps when the company that they work for gets bought out by some massive faceless corporation that doesn't value their years of loyal service at all, at which point they get replaced by A) a robot, B) an outsourced sweatshop laborer in a 3rd world country that can be payed a fraction of the local rate, C) a younger and more compliant hire that will inevitably have a massive turnover rate, but who cares because there are plenty more where that came from, or D) the cokehead nephew of the new CEO that needs a job to keep him out of trouble, and hey, might as well keep things in the family, right?

Maybe I'm just a bitter, late Gen-X'er.

Filed under “pointless but undeniably cool”