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North Country [chat]land

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Posts

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    Kana wrote: »
    Just finished reading a manga called Sekitou Elegy. It's a really nice antidote to all the bullshit that usually drives me crazy about romance stories.

    - they're not teenagers! Or even students! They meet working as flaggers at a construction site
    - the girl isn't some delicate flower with no personal history or desires. She works part time at a small fabrication shop, and she's trying to get a license as a commercial truck driver.
    - Neither the guy nor the girl are the prettiest people in the story. They're both just kind of above average-ish.
    - They have realistic problems: his widowed mom's not really that nice a person, the girlfriend totally has anger issues, they're both unskilled labor in a shit economy.
    - Dude is a bit of a recovering neckbeard, so he's got to resist being overly clingy or an annoying sexmonkey.
    - Neither the first kiss or the first time they have sex is a "Congratulations you win at romance!" end point. They have to keep working on the relationship, and that's really what the story's about.

    Seinen stories tend to be more realistic about romance.
    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum
    Nox+Aeternum.gif
    Damn straight and I'm not giving up any of my crazy ground to some no talent hack.
  • japanjapan Registered User regular
    MadCaddy wrote: »
    japan wrote: »
    I only really gamble occasionally, and invariably on long shots that I don't think are nearly as long as the bookies do.

    Then again I put money on Frank Schleck finishing in the places in the 2012 TdF.

    That's a good way to reduce what you give away. Pinnacle is an awesome resource for any serious overseas bettor, another thing I'm jealous of, but I heard they're in a bad spot right now. I just read the newest book by James Quinn which was pretty good, and sets out the basics of setting a line in races.. I've given up on any other sport, as it's the handicapping that attracted me to this and not the horses.. The fact I like animals is just kinda a bonus. I mainly decided to try it out seriously once online poker became defunct in the US.

    Yeah, I'm not a fan of gambling in and of itself. I'll bet on events that I'm interested in anyway just to add something and also for the satisfaction of (occasionally) being right.

    Plus, as you say, if you only bet when you think the bookie has it wrong you place fewer bets, and those you win have bigger payouts.

    Biggest "kicking myself" moment recently was Gerald Ciolek winning Milan-San Remo when Paddy Power was giving 175 to 1.
  • Evil MultifariousEvil Multifarious Registered User regular
    QUANTITATIVE CONDOMS: Ruled, for your measure.
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    someone said what I have been going on about with regards to Neverwinter in a much better way:

    spoiled for troof
    Thanks for blogging this. I've been through a plethora of conversations regarding supposed F2P recently, and I tend to find what you write helps enlighten a great deal.

    I've been having a very similar experience to those which you describe with the newly open beta Neverwinter (though I haven't quite worked out what's still Beta about it other than using Beta as a safety net to soft launch and in a few exceptional circumstances excuse otherwise extremely poor support and community management).

    Just to outline my point of view; as per recent F2P discussions, as smarter people than myself have pointed out. These games are not F2P, they are "Optimized for Profit" or O4P.

    Neverwinter has two tiers of Founders pack, the most expensive costing $199.99 (or more if you're paying from Europe which is not recalculated until actually making the payment... -.-), this pack contains a fancy mount, a fancy title, a fancy companion character amongst over a dozen other items that for the most part diminish the potentially rewarding gameplay experience by instead giving you a rewarding payment experience. And on top of this you also get an extremely healthy injection of their 2nd in game currency (Astral Diamonds) that has it's own in game exchange market into their cash shop currency (ZEN coins) ... this is interesting, as beyond grinding daily quests etc to gain Rough Astral Diamonds (a limited number of which can be refined daily into usable Astral Diamonds) this leaves the normal Copper, Silver, Gold currency for the most part a weakened F2P currency ... this is all weaved together very confusingly by the various ways to exchange or move value between the different currencies...

    For example. Nightmare Chests (aka Mystery Boxes that contain 1 of a number of potential items with a decreasing chance of getting one of the rarer items) and the Zen Keys that open them...

    As you play you'll "randomly" receive drops of these Chests, many people I've spoken to have along with myself questioned how random these Mystery Box drops actually are as the first drop seems timed and successive drops seem to come at intervals random enough to be different from person to person but consistent enough to provide the player with an incentive to buy Zen every few hours, whilst winners of the Mystery Box jackpot are spammed in the chat and center of your screen every 30 seconds at peak.

    ... these boxes can be sold for aprox 100 Astral Diamonds, Astral Diamonds are currently valued at aprox 410 Astral Diamonds per 1 Zen, a Key to open a single box can be bought for 125 Zen, which gives a Key the aproximate value of 51250 Astral Diamonds. You can buy 540 Zen for €4.99, which gives us a €1.16 value per Key. You get 2 Million Astral Diamonds ... as stated previously Astral Diamonds exchange to Zen at aproximate 410 AD to 1 Zen, which means 2,000,000 AD = 4878 Zen, which means your seemingly excessive 2 million Astral Diamonds are worth about €45.27 or around $59.34 which seems incredibly low considering most people at first, second and third glance feel this is one of the most valuable benefits of the $700 dollar Founders Pack.

    And neither this $700 dollar value pack, and certainly not it's smaller $140 dollar value cousin will do what is necessary to remedy the huge O4P issues such as bank and bag space, or tedious and monotonous travel, unless you spend your advantageous Astral Diamond edge on Mount Training to retrace and retrace your steps faster or buying bags and trading for Zen to buy bank space before the games drop system overloads you with items you'll instinctively want to sell who's Copper, Silver Gold value is actually so negligible that really you should be treating 50%+ of the games loot as trash drops to conserve what little space you have.

    When it comes to how valuable these packs are in terms of gameplay experience, my own honest truth is that a €19.99 Zen purchase to buy one bag and one bank upgrade to remove the most obnoxious O4P issues has more "Gamer Value" than a $700 founders pack.

    I didn't buy my mount, I earned my mount. I didn't buy a powerful companion, I trained one. I didn't burn through Profession progress on the back of Astral Diamonds time saving payments, I augmented my game experience as I played with an additional progress over time facet. I played the experience - I didn't buy the experience.

    These types of super sized "Founders packs" are an acknowledgement by the Industry that they perceive the willingness of the public to invest these large sums. But as people begin to acknowledge that these packs for the most part only exist to extract money rather than expand or accentuate the games experience the growing familiarity with this practice will ostracize the vocal minority until the majority start to perceive them as just another bad F2P model.

    Perhaps I'm wrong... but I feel Publishers need to realise that a good F2P model will potentially never be as profitable as an abusive or manipulative F2P model at face value. But as long as the games are good and the respect for players is clearly present the nurturing or their respective communities will pay dividends in regards to how much people are willing to pay over time rather than on impulse when they have little comprehension as to what they're actually receiving until hopefully big publishers and developers once again will have communities where players beget players, as with the likes of Steam, Eve, WoW and Ultima Online.


    edit: and the reply
    Jonathon, wow so much good information in your post. When I was writing my first comprehensive paper on the state of monetization models world-wide (Sustainable Virtual Economies and Business Models, 2009) I spent about 4 months playing an IGG (a Chinese company) game called Galaxy Online and I was the top ranked Western player during this time. You can see that Neverwinter, a Chinese Game from Perfect World, uses an iteration of the monetization model I described in detail back in 2009. In China all the monetization techs (this is what I call them), and there are thousands of them, study this one model and try to come up with ways to optimize it to deceive and coerce the consumer into spending on a product they realize is not designed for longevity.

    I actually get emails from Chinese monetization techs bragging about how dumb consumers are and how effective their models are. I won't publish these emails because I want to keep receiving them :)

    The real-world economy in China, and to a lesser extent Korea, is very new. The younger generations are experiencing much more wealth than their parents ever saw and conspicuous consumption is praised. It is very different than in the West where we kind of got over that a while ago. So while we may see people buying their way through games as foolish, they see it as a status symbol. Western companies should not look at the metrics in the East and assume these models will work the same way here. This is one of the problems you get when metrics-driven professionals with little game experience make decisions in our industry.


    TLDR: Neverwinter (run by Perfect World) is based on Chinese / Korean monetization models which are designed to deceive the player into overpay for assets they know are going to devalue rapidly in a game that is not intended to last.

    Honestly, I think this is a problem brought about by both sides. We're getting beat over the head with the tragedy of the Commons.
    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum
    Nox+Aeternum.gif
    Damn straight and I'm not giving up any of my crazy ground to some no talent hack.
  • TavTav Registered User regular
    oh my god

    someone I know is complaining about the onion posting something in bad taste

    this is why we can't have nice things
  • Evil MultifariousEvil Multifarious Registered User regular
    Deebaser wrote: »
    If I ordered a Ramos Gin Fizz, that bartender is getting a $5 per drink.

    Chat with the bartender and see if they like making fancy drinks

    Or order it on a slow day, like a weekday early dinner thing

    Don't shout it at some beleaguered sweaty man behind the counter at happy hour, no
  • JeanJean Northern Alberta , CanadaRegistered User regular
    When I'm feeling drunk and emotional, I listen to 2 types of music

    1) Old french music (1970s-1990s)
    2) Le roi Lion!!!!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkyDt1LlhSI

    C'est l'histoire de la vieeeeeeee
    "You won't destroy us, You won't destroy our democracy. We are a small but proud nation. No one can bomb us to silence. No one can scare us from being Norway. This evening and tonight, we'll take care of each other. That's what we do best when attacked'' - Jens Stoltenberg
  • MadCaddyMadCaddy Riksadvokate Registered User regular
    Mortious wrote: »
    Finished reading that Gamasutra article.

    It's interesting, but he went completely off the rails by the time he reached War Inc.

    Also, anecdotally at least, his comments about premium ammo in WoT doesn't match up to what I hear from the people I know that play competitively.

    That article was really disappointing. I can build a psychological profile of the writer and his agenda, which is very off putting to me, especially on a piece not labelled opinion and trying to "cite" facts.
    He also doesn't understand how prevalent "games" are, not understand markets of any sort as well as he thinks he does.
    League of Legends: SorryNotRly Steam: MMForYourHealth Hero Academy: MadCaddy
  • TavTav Registered User regular
    Don't there just have to be some topics, or elements of topics, that are not available for satire?

    no
  • Evil MultifariousEvil Multifarious Registered User regular
    ...c'est un peu bizarre
  • OrganichuOrganichu Registered User regular
    when we were at the cocktail bar in boston (where they mostly asked you for a general flavor you wanted, rather than a specific beverage), i asked the dude for his non-trashy interpretation of those tgif monstrosities- an alcoholic milkshake, basically.

    he made me a brandy alexander that he shook for fucking days. it was incredible, delightful texture. i believe will ordered a RGF which was also great.
  • override367override367 Registered User regular
    I like to tell people that I'm playing LoL on my ipad and some people get really mad
  • MadCaddyMadCaddy Riksadvokate Registered User regular
    japan wrote: »
    MadCaddy wrote: »
    japan wrote: »
    I only really gamble occasionally, and invariably on long shots that I don't think are nearly as long as the bookies do.

    Then again I put money on Frank Schleck finishing in the places in the 2012 TdF.

    That's a good way to reduce what you give away. Pinnacle is an awesome resource for any serious overseas bettor, another thing I'm jealous of, but I heard they're in a bad spot right now. I just read the newest book by James Quinn which was pretty good, and sets out the basics of setting a line in races.. I've given up on any other sport, as it's the handicapping that attracted me to this and not the horses.. The fact I like animals is just kinda a bonus. I mainly decided to try it out seriously once online poker became defunct in the US.

    Yeah, I'm not a fan of gambling in and of itself. I'll bet on events that I'm interested in anyway just to add something and also for the satisfaction of (occasionally) being right.

    Plus, as you say, if you only bet when you think the bookie has it wrong you place fewer bets, and those you win have bigger payouts.

    Biggest "kicking myself" moment recently was Gerald Ciolek winning Milan-San Remo when Paddy Power was giving 175 to 1.

    Yea, the urge to berate oneself over those iffy long shot that turn into sure things is the gamblers demon. It's als where most e profit for sharps come from. There's a e'ry important concept to all gambling (and can be used even more broadly) called the horse race concept. If you can get a grasp on that, you'll be a fairly successful punter, even if math isn't your strongest suit.

    League of Legends: SorryNotRly Steam: MMForYourHealth Hero Academy: MadCaddy
  • Evil MultifariousEvil Multifarious Registered User regular
    The best part about QUANTITATIVE CONDOMS is that they are designed to always indicate an impressive but plausible 7.5 inches
  • CorehealerCorehealer The Apothecary Your Dark Descent FriendRegistered User regular
    edited May 2013
    someone said what I have been going on about with regards to Neverwinter in a much better way:

    spoiled for troof
    Thanks for blogging this. I've been through a plethora of conversations regarding supposed F2P recently, and I tend to find what you write helps enlighten a great deal.

    I've been having a very similar experience to those which you describe with the newly open beta Neverwinter (though I haven't quite worked out what's still Beta about it other than using Beta as a safety net to soft launch and in a few exceptional circumstances excuse otherwise extremely poor support and community management).

    Just to outline my point of view; as per recent F2P discussions, as smarter people than myself have pointed out. These games are not F2P, they are "Optimized for Profit" or O4P.

    Neverwinter has two tiers of Founders pack, the most expensive costing $199.99 (or more if you're paying from Europe which is not recalculated until actually making the payment... -.-), this pack contains a fancy mount, a fancy title, a fancy companion character amongst over a dozen other items that for the most part diminish the potentially rewarding gameplay experience by instead giving you a rewarding payment experience. And on top of this you also get an extremely healthy injection of their 2nd in game currency (Astral Diamonds) that has it's own in game exchange market into their cash shop currency (ZEN coins) ... this is interesting, as beyond grinding daily quests etc to gain Rough Astral Diamonds (a limited number of which can be refined daily into usable Astral Diamonds) this leaves the normal Copper, Silver, Gold currency for the most part a weakened F2P currency ... this is all weaved together very confusingly by the various ways to exchange or move value between the different currencies...

    For example. Nightmare Chests (aka Mystery Boxes that contain 1 of a number of potential items with a decreasing chance of getting one of the rarer items) and the Zen Keys that open them...

    As you play you'll "randomly" receive drops of these Chests, many people I've spoken to have along with myself questioned how random these Mystery Box drops actually are as the first drop seems timed and successive drops seem to come at intervals random enough to be different from person to person but consistent enough to provide the player with an incentive to buy Zen every few hours, whilst winners of the Mystery Box jackpot are spammed in the chat and center of your screen every 30 seconds at peak.

    ... these boxes can be sold for aprox 100 Astral Diamonds, Astral Diamonds are currently valued at aprox 410 Astral Diamonds per 1 Zen, a Key to open a single box can be bought for 125 Zen, which gives a Key the aproximate value of 51250 Astral Diamonds. You can buy 540 Zen for €4.99, which gives us a €1.16 value per Key. You get 2 Million Astral Diamonds ... as stated previously Astral Diamonds exchange to Zen at aproximate 410 AD to 1 Zen, which means 2,000,000 AD = 4878 Zen, which means your seemingly excessive 2 million Astral Diamonds are worth about €45.27 or around $59.34 which seems incredibly low considering most people at first, second and third glance feel this is one of the most valuable benefits of the $700 dollar Founders Pack.

    And neither this $700 dollar value pack, and certainly not it's smaller $140 dollar value cousin will do what is necessary to remedy the huge O4P issues such as bank and bag space, or tedious and monotonous travel, unless you spend your advantageous Astral Diamond edge on Mount Training to retrace and retrace your steps faster or buying bags and trading for Zen to buy bank space before the games drop system overloads you with items you'll instinctively want to sell who's Copper, Silver Gold value is actually so negligible that really you should be treating 50%+ of the games loot as trash drops to conserve what little space you have.

    When it comes to how valuable these packs are in terms of gameplay experience, my own honest truth is that a €19.99 Zen purchase to buy one bag and one bank upgrade to remove the most obnoxious O4P issues has more "Gamer Value" than a $700 founders pack.

    I didn't buy my mount, I earned my mount. I didn't buy a powerful companion, I trained one. I didn't burn through Profession progress on the back of Astral Diamonds time saving payments, I augmented my game experience as I played with an additional progress over time facet. I played the experience - I didn't buy the experience.

    These types of super sized "Founders packs" are an acknowledgement by the Industry that they perceive the willingness of the public to invest these large sums. But as people begin to acknowledge that these packs for the most part only exist to extract money rather than expand or accentuate the games experience the growing familiarity with this practice will ostracize the vocal minority until the majority start to perceive them as just another bad F2P model.

    Perhaps I'm wrong... but I feel Publishers need to realise that a good F2P model will potentially never be as profitable as an abusive or manipulative F2P model at face value. But as long as the games are good and the respect for players is clearly present the nurturing or their respective communities will pay dividends in regards to how much people are willing to pay over time rather than on impulse when they have little comprehension as to what they're actually receiving until hopefully big publishers and developers once again will have communities where players beget players, as with the likes of Steam, Eve, WoW and Ultima Online.


    edit: and the reply
    Jonathon, wow so much good information in your post. When I was writing my first comprehensive paper on the state of monetization models world-wide (Sustainable Virtual Economies and Business Models, 2009) I spent about 4 months playing an IGG (a Chinese company) game called Galaxy Online and I was the top ranked Western player during this time. You can see that Neverwinter, a Chinese Game from Perfect World, uses an iteration of the monetization model I described in detail back in 2009. In China all the monetization techs (this is what I call them), and there are thousands of them, study this one model and try to come up with ways to optimize it to deceive and coerce the consumer into spending on a product they realize is not designed for longevity.

    I actually get emails from Chinese monetization techs bragging about how dumb consumers are and how effective their models are. I won't publish these emails because I want to keep receiving them :)

    The real-world economy in China, and to a lesser extent Korea, is very new. The younger generations are experiencing much more wealth than their parents ever saw and conspicuous consumption is praised. It is very different than in the West where we kind of got over that a while ago. So while we may see people buying their way through games as foolish, they see it as a status symbol. Western companies should not look at the metrics in the East and assume these models will work the same way here. This is one of the problems you get when metrics-driven professionals with little game experience make decisions in our industry.


    TLDR: Neverwinter (run by Perfect World) is based on Chinese / Korean monetization models which are designed to deceive the player into overpay for assets they know are going to devalue rapidly in a game that is not intended to last.

    Honestly, I think this is a problem brought about by both sides. We're getting beat over the head with the tragedy of the Commons.

    You know, as much as I enjoy Neverwinter, what Riemann says about it here is 100% true and it's already starting to show.

    And I do think, tragedy aside, at least enough of us core/MMO gamers will realize this is BS and make a concerted effort to not buy into it anymore, and instead shift to some other financial model or back to subscriptions. I know I'm starting to get tired of buying these "long term" experiences piecemeal over time, ease of entry aside.

    But I might just be naively wishing for a gaming consumer base with a backbone and a brain.
    Corehealer on
    2ItqRJ7.jpgSteam/Origin/PSN: Corehealer / Core's Streamtastical Livestream (Streaming Wildstar Beta later this year).
  • KanaKana Registered User regular
    Shivahn wrote: »
    Kana wrote: »
    Just finished reading a manga called Sekitou Elegy. It's a really nice antidote to all the bullshit that usually drives me crazy about romance stories.

    - they're not teenagers! Or even students! They meet working as flaggers at a construction site
    - the girl isn't some delicate flower with no personal history or desires. She works part time at a small fabrication shop, and she's trying to get a license as a commercial truck driver.
    - Neither the guy nor the girl are the prettiest people in the story. They're both just kind of above average-ish.
    - They have realistic problems: his widowed mom's not really that nice a person, the girlfriend totally has anger issues, they're both unskilled labor in a shit economy.
    - Dude is a bit of a recovering neckbeard, so he's got to resist being overly clingy or an annoying sexmonkey.
    - Neither the first kiss or the first time they have sex is a "Congratulations you win at romance!" end point. They have to keep working on the relationship, and that's really what the story's about.

    The sex equals victory thing is a huge pet peeve of mine.

    It's really bizarre and it bugs me too. Both Japan and the west are equally bad about it, too. Like, hooray, you've tamed the wild pussy, now the girl is yours, nothing else to see here, story over?

    It's not like it isn't a step in the relationship, or that sex isn't an important part of the relationship, but it's just a part, it's not the culmination
  • Evil MultifariousEvil Multifarious Registered User regular
    Organichu wrote: »
    when we were at the cocktail bar in boston (where they mostly asked you for a general flavor you wanted, rather than a specific beverage), i asked the dude for his non-trashy interpretation of those tgif monstrosities- an alcoholic milkshake, basically.

    he made me a brandy alexander that he shook for fucking days. it was incredible, delightful texture. i believe will ordered a RGF which was also great.

    I should try overshaking drinks more often

    But thirty seconds in and I'm already clawing at the top and licking the drips and my eyes are rolling wildly
  • skippydumptruckskippydumptruck FAK U HODGEHEG Registered User regular
    I hate when soy is sick

    I think he has hives

    dr tomorrow
  • override367override367 Registered User regular
    Holy shit I got an A on my art final

    Hooooooooowwwwww
  • TavTav Registered User regular
    Kana wrote: »
    It's not like it isn't a step in the relationship, or that sex isn't an important part of the relationship, but it's just a part, it's not the cumination

  • OrganichuOrganichu Registered User regular
    Organichu wrote: »
    when we were at the cocktail bar in boston (where they mostly asked you for a general flavor you wanted, rather than a specific beverage), i asked the dude for his non-trashy interpretation of those tgif monstrosities- an alcoholic milkshake, basically.

    he made me a brandy alexander that he shook for fucking days. it was incredible, delightful texture. i believe will ordered a RGF which was also great.

    I should try overshaking drinks more often

    But thirty seconds in and I'm already clawing at the top and licking the drips and my eyes are rolling wildly

    making that same face the horses make when will drops a cheetah in the equine pen at the zoo
  • MadCaddyMadCaddy Riksadvokate Registered User regular
    Cryptic did go down the shitter after the sale.. I still haven't logged int STO in over a year, I hope you guys haven't exiled me yet.
    League of Legends: SorryNotRly Steam: MMForYourHealth Hero Academy: MadCaddy
  • skippydumptruckskippydumptruck FAK U HODGEHEG Registered User regular
    also just tried feeding him turkey for the first time, he aint impressed

    @arch dis fakkin vegetarian
  • Evil MultifariousEvil Multifarious Registered User regular
    Tav wrote: »
    Don't there just have to be some topics, or elements of topics, that are not available for satire?

    no

    Totally contextual

    The onion is explicitly a place for satire to occur though, so... I don't know what people expect
  • override367override367 Registered User regular
    MadCaddy wrote: »
    Cryptic did go down the shitter after the sale.. I still haven't logged int STO in over a year, I hope you guys haven't exiled me yet.

    never winter is a good deal more competent than sto was
  • MadCaddyMadCaddy Riksadvokate Registered User regular
    But f2p games aren't flawed by nature, it's just what people "pay" for as cogent will vary, as consumers will want different things. Balancing a games economics is more akin to balancing a television station r a studio these days.
    League of Legends: SorryNotRly Steam: MMForYourHealth Hero Academy: MadCaddy
  • JacobkoshJacobkosh Gamble a stamp! I can show you how to be a real man!Super Moderator, Moderator mod
  • OrganichuOrganichu Registered User regular
    I hate when soy is sick

    I think he has hives

    dr tomorrow

    i love this recent pic of him just towering over the tiny babby. it's prolly partially a trick of perspective but he basically looks like the giant-ray'd baby from honey i...
  • spool32spool32 Contrary Library Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    I like to tell people that I'm playing LoL on my ipad and some people get really mad

    spool32 on
    Successful Kickstarter get! Drop by Bare Mettle Entertainment if you'd like to see what we're making.
  • Evil MultifariousEvil Multifarious Registered User regular
    Organichu wrote: »
    Organichu wrote: »
    when we were at the cocktail bar in boston (where they mostly asked you for a general flavor you wanted, rather than a specific beverage), i asked the dude for his non-trashy interpretation of those tgif monstrosities- an alcoholic milkshake, basically.

    he made me a brandy alexander that he shook for fucking days. it was incredible, delightful texture. i believe will ordered a RGF which was also great.

    I should try overshaking drinks more often

    But thirty seconds in and I'm already clawing at the top and licking the drips and my eyes are rolling wildly

    making that same face the horses make when will drops a cheetah in the equine pen at the zoo

    A chunk of ice falls into the strainer, blocking the flow, and I begin to keen wildly and bang it against the table
  • CorehealerCorehealer The Apothecary Your Dark Descent FriendRegistered User regular
    Holy shit I got an A on my art final

    Hooooooooowwwwww

    Clearly your a savant waiting to fly, and you had no idea until now.

    Go now, and throw paint at a wall Jackson Pollock style! Make millions!
    2ItqRJ7.jpgSteam/Origin/PSN: Corehealer / Core's Streamtastical Livestream (Streaming Wildstar Beta later this year).
  • CindersCinders Registered User regular
    Hmm, 2-handed warrior feels significantly weaker than the cleric.
  • _J__J_ Pedant Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Tav wrote: »
    oh my god

    someone I know is complaining about the onion posting something in bad taste

    this is why we can't have nice things

    I hope it was this.
    _J_ on
  • JeanJean Northern Alberta , CanadaRegistered User regular
    Jacobkosh wrote: »

    The girl who's doing the photo bombin looks oddly familliar....

    Didn't she play in a comedy before? I feel like I SHOULD know her....

    "You won't destroy us, You won't destroy our democracy. We are a small but proud nation. No one can bomb us to silence. No one can scare us from being Norway. This evening and tonight, we'll take care of each other. That's what we do best when attacked'' - Jens Stoltenberg
  • ThomamelasThomamelas Registered User regular
    One of our customers has allowed us to do some extreme stress testing in their production environment. So we have a beta server running ~1700 cameras. It's generating over 2 TB an hour of video. And it's using 30% of it's 10 gig connection for just incoming video.
    There's no living with a killing. There's no goin' back from one. Right or wrong, it's a brand... a brand sticks. There's no goin' back. Now you run on home to your mother and tell her... tell her everything's alright. And there aren't any more guns in the valley.
  • japanjapan Registered User regular
    MadCaddy wrote: »
    japan wrote: »
    MadCaddy wrote: »
    japan wrote: »
    I only really gamble occasionally, and invariably on long shots that I don't think are nearly as long as the bookies do.

    Then again I put money on Frank Schleck finishing in the places in the 2012 TdF.

    That's a good way to reduce what you give away. Pinnacle is an awesome resource for any serious overseas bettor, another thing I'm jealous of, but I heard they're in a bad spot right now. I just read the newest book by James Quinn which was pretty good, and sets out the basics of setting a line in races.. I've given up on any other sport, as it's the handicapping that attracted me to this and not the horses.. The fact I like animals is just kinda a bonus. I mainly decided to try it out seriously once online poker became defunct in the US.

    Yeah, I'm not a fan of gambling in and of itself. I'll bet on events that I'm interested in anyway just to add something and also for the satisfaction of (occasionally) being right.

    Plus, as you say, if you only bet when you think the bookie has it wrong you place fewer bets, and those you win have bigger payouts.

    Biggest "kicking myself" moment recently was Gerald Ciolek winning Milan-San Remo when Paddy Power was giving 175 to 1.

    Yea, the urge to berate oneself over those iffy long shot that turn into sure things is the gamblers demon. It's als where most e profit for sharps come from. There's a e'ry important concept to all gambling (and can be used even more broadly) called the horse race concept. If you can get a grasp on that, you'll be a fairly successful punter, even if math isn't your strongest suit.

    The thing was that it wasn't that iffy. It's a sprinter's race, and he's genuinely fast, once considered a contemporary of Mark Cavendish or Matt Goss when they were juniors. But they signed to WorldTour Teams and he signed to an African Pro Continental team and dropped off the radar.

    Judged on pure form rather than the fact that he rides for a minor team that got a wildcard entry the odds should have been a lot shorter, but everyone was wrapped up in it being a three-way fight between more established names.

    Won't get a chance like that again for a while.
  • TavTav Registered User regular
    Tav wrote: »
    Don't there just have to be some topics, or elements of topics, that are not available for satire?

    no

    Totally contextual

    The onion is explicitly a place for satire to occur though, so... I don't know what people expect

    "you can't just say awful things and try to hide behind "satire"" seems to be their complaint
  • override367override367 Registered User regular
    edited May 2013
    Corehealer wrote: »
    Holy shit I got an A on my art final

    Hooooooooowwwwww

    Clearly your a savant waiting to fly, and you had no idea until now.

    Go now, and throw paint at a wall Jackson Pollock style! Make millions!

    I went into a brain fever and just wrot about fresco secco and printmaking and shit

    Idr what I even wrote
    override367 on
  • FeralFeral Who needs a medical license when you've got style? Registered User regular
    Shivahn wrote: »
    Kana wrote: »
    Just finished reading a manga called Sekitou Elegy. It's a really nice antidote to all the bullshit that usually drives me crazy about romance stories.

    - they're not teenagers! Or even students! They meet working as flaggers at a construction site
    - the girl isn't some delicate flower with no personal history or desires. She works part time at a small fabrication shop, and she's trying to get a license as a commercial truck driver.
    - Neither the guy nor the girl are the prettiest people in the story. They're both just kind of above average-ish.
    - They have realistic problems: his widowed mom's not really that nice a person, the girlfriend totally has anger issues, they're both unskilled labor in a shit economy.
    - Dude is a bit of a recovering neckbeard, so he's got to resist being overly clingy or an annoying sexmonkey.
    - Neither the first kiss or the first time they have sex is a "Congratulations you win at romance!" end point. They have to keep working on the relationship, and that's really what the story's about.

    The sex equals victory thing is a huge pet peeve of mine.

    Sex is the competition. Orgasm is the victory.

    Also, you never win if you don't play.

    Also, lol tryhards.

    Also, relationships are just the F2P model where you have to shell out for relentless microtransactions to stay in the game
    I am comforted by Richard Dawkins’ theory of memes. Those are mental units: thoughts, ideas, gestures, notions, songs, beliefs, rhymes, ideals, teachings, sayings, phrases, clichés that move from mind to mind as genes move from body to body. After a lifetime of writing, teaching, broadcasting and telling too many jokes, I will leave behind more memes than many. They will all also eventually die, but so it goes. - Roger Ebert, I Do Not Fear Death
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