Your video, VLDL: Just get an adventurer to do it #shorts, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I disagree. That bear is well known for going off-script and doing things his own way... it's the main reason for most of his wacky adventures. Similarly, Bond is a notorious improviser.

I just pity her security detail around a bear and a guy who tends to shoot first and ask questions later. Remember the Frank Drebin debacle?

*Spoiler alert*….I watched it.
It’s just awful.

Neo is now the 1/2, and Trinity the other 1/2, together they’re The One and their love conquers all. Sappy, light on action, seems to ignore or reinterpret earlier stories, and it is now a sci-fi romance, not a sci-fi action adventure movie. Boooooo.

Not to toot my own horn, but I thought this was an amazing true adventure story, the likes of which no longer exist, from a time and profession long past, narrated expertly by a natural story teller and amazing adventurer.
Credit to my stepdad who suggested it.
Shameless self *promote

So this is absolutely true:

When I was 14, I wrote the (as far as I can determine) first parser-driven BBS in the world, basically creating the first purpose-driven, "multi-player" online adventure game, with the following caveats:

- Unis had such games themselves, but their access was limited to other university students and not the general public.

- It's also possible that someone else might have done the same thing before me, but I have never found any record of a such a BBS or online game existing prior to 1981.

The name of the BBS was 'New House of Wrath' and it featured a house that you explored via simple verb-noun syntax. Each room in the house was a BBS function (various text games which I wrote myself / a message base / a philez repository / a graffiti wall) as well as a simple underlying adventure in the style of Zork. The whole thing was written in sloppy TRS-DOS BASIC on a TRS-80 Model III and resided within 48k of memory including a primitive DB engine that I wrote. I still have a 8-pin dot-maxtrix print out of the code.

Shortly after my BBS went "online", a couple of multi-line BBSs sprung up, but these were straight BBSs without an overlying structure like mine.

At the time, I thought nothing of writing the BBS other than it was a fun thing to do. 80 Micro, the magazine that covered all things TRS-related, was going to write a story about my BBS, but nothing ever came of it. I ran it until about 1986 when I finally gave up because everyone was going to online service like Compu$erve and Prodigy.

I know I'll never get a single bit of credit for what I did, but I know what I did and I'm proud of my little contribution to the online world; that'll have to be enough.

For me, it was the PC games (Dune 1 [boring adventure to me] and 2 [awesome RTS]).

Not one "Thank You" from the kids after all that work to bring a little joy and adventure into their little hearts.

Which POTUS started the war(s) in the first place? W. Bush. Which POTUS send billions upon billions of free military hardware to prop up a corrupt, coward, incompetent, puppet government? Trump.

Biden will own the absolutely hasty pull-out, though Biden ISN'T incorrect about unavoidable chaos. That's because the US -- AGAIN like most other American war adventures -- just pack up & left. In war, you either win, lose or negotiate an armistice to avoid a bloody and chaotic aftermath. You can't have an armistice with the Taliban because it wasn't - isn't - even a government entity. Biden was honest about the miscalculation about the speed of Afghanistan's fall to the Taliban at least. He said Intel couldn't imagine it'd be a matter of weeks but thought something like 90 days+? But that means crap because Intel said fall to the Taliban it WILL (i.e., an eventuality). So why the haste, where's the logistical & humanitarian planning? There is no justification for that strategic lapse. The major international criticism (100% valid IMO) is how Biden/America abandonned its own and allies' citizens & Afghan aides in a war torn country with little planning & time to get them out of the country BEFORE the military leave. And leaving all those military hardware intact to the Taliban? What the hell? I mean, what are the generals doing? Is American reverence of its President so total that you can't pushback and buy some time to plan for a better outcome? Or are they really THAT incompetent? What this fiasco shows is that Biden/Pentagon cares nothing BUT the military personel. That is f---ing it, no more, no less.

What we're witnessing in Afghanistan is arguably a collective American sin, not just Biden's. Most Americans want out, like it should've happened yesteryear. The US have been propping up its GDP by using endless wars to feed the mouths of the military industrial complex to sell hardware abroad. It's an addiction whether the Dem/GOP likes it or not. This is just another sad but typical American war history repeating itself again. It's America's military modus operandi. Want to apportion blame? Don't just blame it on Biden, there's plenty to go around: from the WH to the Senate, Pentagon and down to the "Almighty American Military Prowess' Sure Win" mentality in its people are all to blame.

Oh, rest assured that Republicans couldn't do better. Why? Because it's built into the American military DNA: arrogance & ignorance. That breeds blindness, making Intel useless - or worse - counterproductive because of the inherent lack of situational/cultural awareness. It's not really a political mistake, rather a huge military blunder.

It's a f---ing war crime to start a war and not knowing how to end it already. It's made worse that America collectively *think* it can "nation build" a vastly different (culturally, economically, socially, judicially... etc.) , and far away country by basically propping up a corrupt, dependant, puppet government and then leave, knowing (or EVEN worse, NOT knowing) the eventual outcomes. What a pathetic, cruel and deadly joke.

Your video, Baelin's Route - An Epic NPC Man Adventure, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

What struck me in the landing commentary was this tendency to present this like some dumb exotic adventure with lots of teambuilding slogans (also "insane" engineering?). I guess it has to be like that for reasons but it is icky.

This is just engineering on a field trip. We have been there before, we are trying to make it safe to go there again. Things are expected to work.

A lot of white bald men at the monitors but the presentation is diverse :-) NASA is doing its best.

Dude could stand to edit his intro down, but mostly solid info. I had no idea the movie had so many sequels and "sequels"!

At the end he suggests Americans should catch up on some Aussie classics. Any suggestions? The only four that I've seen and know for sure to be Australian, off the top of my head, are Young Einstein, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Castle, and Mad Max. No doubt I've seen more than that, but I don't want to assume set in / starring an Australian means it was actually made by Australians...

The first one in Utah was a covert art installation (imo) which was installed sometime in 2016 (satellite images)* without discovery until now. It was soon removed by some adventure types https://www.instagram.com/p/CIQ-CErDstp/ . Looks like the one in Romania is a cheap copy cat someone slammed together. I'd guess the one in SLO is also a copy cat. Seems they are not trying vary hard to hide the recent ones.
SLO news story https://ktla.com/news/california/mysterious-monolith-erected-in-san-luis-obispo-county-similar-to-the-one-that-appeared-in-utah/

*John Green talks about whos art it may have been and that it was in 2016 due to satellite imagery. https://youtu.be/dG9A6_ijSIM?t=140

Your video, Epic Power Wheels Overland Adventure, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

How so? I've always found C# docs to be quite a bit better than the equivalent Sun/Oracle's Java docs. Language features like auto-property/fields, Lamda expressions, LINQ, etc have been sorely missed in Java (at least by me) until recently. Admittedly, the C# frameworks are a bit lacking compared to the Java ecosystem though. I will admit that I've had to get back into Java recently for my job and after starting to use IntelliJ, it's actually made Java mor enjoyable.

My programming started with BASIC on an IBM XT back in the 80s and various programming books, mainly just copying the programs as written then trying to modify them. This book in particular was pivotal for me as I loved the old Infocom text adventures of the time:

Write Your Own Adventure Programs For Your Microcomputer:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxv0SsvibDMTYkFJbUswOHFQclE/view

(It looks like these books were released for free by Usborne: https://usborne.com/browse-books/features/computer-and-coding-books/ ... what a nostalgia trip!)

In high-school I learned C and LISP for Autocad programming. I continued to learn about C (plus a little C++) and ASM thanks to John Carmack and DOOM/Quake. Wrote my own computer games (mainly RTS as the Command and Conquer series was big back then) ... nothing great but I thought they were cool.

Dabbled in Java a bit in college but ultimately shifted to C++ and C# after getting a consultancy job and that is what I continued with until recently. Now I'm back into Java and currently trying to catch up on all the front-end Javascript libraries now as well as tinkering with Perl, GO, and Objective-C.

Woo boy, this is a doozy! The fact of the matter is a video comment section is not the place to have this conversation. There's too much to discuss, too many questions from one another that are best asked soon after they're conceived, etc. I frankly just don't have the time to respond to everything you said. Don't take this as acquiescence; if you'd like to have a Zoom chat some time, I'd be down.

In any event, I'll respond to what I find either the most important or at least most interesting:

Having theories is definitely the best way to go about most of the things you consider fact (for the moment), but the fact of the matter (no pun intended) is that at some point you'll need to use some of those claims as fact/belief in order to take action. And it's just human nature to, if one believes in a claim for long enough, it becomes fact, despite all your suggestions of objectivity. It's easy to say you're a scientist through and through, but if you're really someone who doesn't believe anything and merely theorize things, I think you'd be a sad human being. But that's a claim that I leave up to the scientists.

> Yes, and I eat animals because they're delicious.

You think that's a defensible moral claim? I find that disgraceful. If you truly think your own pleasure is worth sentient beings' lives then... I don't know what to say to you. That strikes me as callous and unempathetic, 2 traits you often assert as shameful. This is my point. You sound pretty obstinate to at least a reasonable claim. To respond with just "they're tasty". You don't sound reasonable to me.

> You may be correct, but eating meat is hardly the worst thing humans are up to.

Aw, come on @newtboy, I thought better of you than to give me a logical fallacy. The fact that you're resorting to logical fallacies wwould indicate to me that either you're confronting some cognitive dissonance, otherwise why would you stoop to such a weak statement?

> I gladly discuss vegetarianism with honest people, but I'm prepared when they start spouting bullshit like " eating any red meat is more harmful than smoking two packs a day of filterless cigarettes" ...

There is a lot of scientific research (not funded by Big ___) that is currently spouting this "bullshit". What happened to your receptive, scientific, theory-based lifestyle? It's true nutrition science is a fucking smog-filled night mare considering how much money is at stake, but I find it telling that a lot of the corporations are using the same ad men from Big Cigarette to stir up constant doubt.

Again, I find it peculiar that you are highly suspicious of big corporations... except when it comes to something that you want to be true.

Again, this is my point. Take a moment, take a few breaths, and look inside. Can you notice that you're acting in the exact same fashion as the people you purport to be obscenely stubborn?

Check out NutritionFacts if you want to see any of the science. Actual science. I would hope that it would give you at least somedoubt and curiosity.

That's a true scientist's homeostatic state: curiosity. Are you curious to investigate the dozens (hundreds?) of papers with a truly non-confirmation-biased mind? How much of a scientist are you?

> I've never met a vegan that wasn't a bold faced liar in support of veganism, so I'm less likely to give them a full chance at convincing me.

This, for me, raises all sorts of red flags. That's quite a sweeping claim.

> Again, that would be long held theories in my case, and it's not hard to change them. Mad cow disease got me to change until I was certain it wasn't in America. No, I'm not recoiling. I'll listen to anyone who's respectful and honest.

So, you're willing to make decisions based on self-interest and not morality? Well, duh. Everyone does that. It doesn't sound like you had a self-reflective moment. It sounds like you merely had a self-interested decision based on the risk to your own health.

And finally, all your talk about Bob -- of course he acts, consistently, like a twat. I just don't like feeding trolls. I don't think there's anyone on Videosift who's on the precipice and would be pushed over into the Alt-right Pit by Bob's ridiculous nonsense.

> Edit: in general I agree that dispassionate fact based replies with references are better at convincing people than derision, there are exceptions, and there are those who are unconvinceable and disinterested in facts that don't support their lies.

Ironically, I think science has disproved this. Facts don't change minds in situations like this. There are lots of articles on this. I didn't have the wherewithal to dig into their citations, but I leave that (non-confirmation-biased) adventure for you. [1]

---

I knew I wouldn't make this short, but I think it's shorter than it could have been.

Lastly, I'm with @BSR; I do appreciate your perseverance. Not everyone has as much as you seem to have! Whenever I see Bob... doing his thing, I can always be assured you'll take most of the words from my mouth. [2]

[1]
Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds | The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds

This Article Won’t Change Your Mind - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/this-article-wont-change-your-mind/519093/

Why People Ignore Facts | Psychology Today
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/words-matter/201810/why-people-ignore-facts

Why Many People Stubbornly Refuse to Change Their Minds | Psychology Today
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/think-well/201812/why-many-people-stubbornly-refuse-change-their-minds

Why Facts Don't Always Change Minds | Hidden Brain : NPR
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/743195213

[2] This comment has not been edited nor checked for spelling and grammatical errors. Haven't you got enough from me?