Jenksismyhero

Good PC game recommendation for anyone that likes city builders: Banished. I got it for $4.99 on GoG.com. For 5 bucks it's a no brainer but i'd still probably recommend it at $20. It doesn't have a TON of replayability after a while, but you'll put in hours and hours and hours figuring it all out before you get to the point where there isn't anything new to do. Well worth the money.

Yeah the bigger scare is the unknown. They still don't know how long it stays in your system. It could lay dormant for years for all they know. Why risk it?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 2, 2016 -> 09:36 AM) 1) it's yuuuuuuuuuuuuge, with a y 2) I'm really doubting that he's somewhat intelligent. His vocabulary is about equivalent to junior high, he appears to be functionally illiterate in the way he writes, his speeches are rambling incoherent nonsense where one sentence has nothing to do with the one that came before it or the one that's coming next, and he's proud that he doesn't ever read anything (except the top 50 articles on Google News about himself that his staff prints out for him every morning, yes this is a real thing). edit: or what lost said, dementia or something maybe I've read enough about his pga/golf work to know the dude is somewhat with it. He's not a genius, but he's not a dumb person either.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 2, 2016 -> 09:18 AM) I'm sure there's a few that try, but he's surrounded himself with sycophants his entire life and his campaign mostly seems to be second/third tier political operatives. You can easily tell when a tweet or a press release isn't crafted by Trump himself, and it's obvious he still retains near-total control of the campaign messaging. If he really is an honest-to-god narcissist, he literally can't help but respond to any perceived slight no matter how small, and he can't stand when the spotlight isn't on him. His response to Clinton saying "it's easy to bait Trump on twitter" was to have an instant meltdown on twitter. eta: Ivanka is probably really the only one he listens to, but even then no one can completely control him. Have you ever made a hot-headed post here or elsewhere that, even as you hit submit and knew it was probably over the line, it still felt good? That appears to be Trump 24/7. No I get that, that's obviously a huuuuge problem of his, but he's also (despite the things he says) a somewhat intelligent human being. You would think someone can connect the dots for him: you keep saying and doing these things, you're losing any shot you have at the Presidency.

It was a big concern for me when I traveled to Puerto Rico earlier this year and my wife was 4-5 months pregnant. It sucks now that it invaded Florida since we go there every year for vacation. Not sure we'll be making the trip this year. Still deciding on baby #3. I bet Florida's tourism industry gets smacked hard.

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 2, 2016 -> 09:04 AM) The thing is, having a gold star family at a political convention is pretty commonplace. Part of a convention should be showing respect for the country. But the difference this election is the republican candidate has disparaged a religion and proposed banning muslims from coming to US. Well, US citizens and US soldiers are muslim. Part 2 is Trumps inability to handle criticism, so he must not only respond, but disparage and accuse the family of being sympathetic to terrorists. This family, whose son sacrificed his life for the country in Afghanistan. This is only a political gain because Trump made it a political hit to himself. I can't believe he doesn't have an advisor (or someone like Ivanka or one of his sons) screaming at him hourly that people are purposefully baiting him and to just shut up. Yet he keeps getting hooked. The guy was in the best spot of his campaign right after the RNC and he's ruined any small shot that he had. It's just amazing to watch the train wreck.

Sure, but how much of that "pass" is actual support versus a vote to prevent giving Democrats and Hillary in particular another 4 years? It'd be nice if someone did a poll on that. Are you actually supporting Trump because of Trump or because of anti-Hillary/Dem policy.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 1, 2016 -> 09:55 AM) God job Trump, keep the Khan thing in the news, it's definitely good for you! Why does he seem to think "he doesn't even know me!" is a sensible response to what he said? This really should be the nail in the coffin for the base of the Republican party supporting him. You don't mess with the military/dead soldiers.

QUOTE (Ezio Auditore @ Aug 1, 2016 -> 09:47 AM) The larger problem is that people simply don't care. Trump is immune to fact-checking. Even if he's busted red-handed on the spot making a huge ass lie about something that's a big deal, his supporters will just go "but Hillary" and waste time with false equivalences. Hillary supporters are/would be the same. That's just where we are in 2016 as a country. Elections have become American Idol competitions. The truth doesn't matter, just how it's all presented.

QUOTE (Tex @ Aug 1, 2016 -> 06:37 AM) Setting up posts to make Hillary look good. Nicely done. Instead of Trump's money? Trump doesn't know Russian's aggressive advances, he gets a pass. He insults a fire marshal for enforcing the law, gets a pass. Claims a Mexican American judge can't be unbiased in his rulings, gets a pass. Mocks a disabled reporter, gets a pass. Commits fraud, gets a pass. Won't release his tax returns, gets a pass. That's all old news. Hillary does any of that and the GOP will spend a few million on special investigations. How is he getting a pass? On a daily basis he's being talked about in a negative way for the dumb things he says/does. That's all you can do at this point. He's not an elected official.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 04:54 PM) Great post! Just wanted to point out both sides do it, since you didnt.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 01:58 PM) RUSSIAN AL-QAEDA ISIS SLEEPER CELLS WILL KILL US ALL! At least with Russia, the threat of near-complete global destruction was real and the world was actually on the brink of it a couple of times. Don't forget "white cops will kill you just for walking down the street!"

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 11:07 AM) Because of why he was making that distinction. Michelle Obama made a point about slaves who built the White House, and O'Reilly's response to was to claim that they didn't have it as bad as others. There's no way to describe that but to say he's downplaying how bad the slaves who built the White House had it. When professional historians are doing it as part of research, it's a distinctly different context than when a political pundit it using it in response to a political opponent. Pointing that out as a response to someone making a point about the horrors of slavery is downplaying it, though. What other reason does Prof. O'Reilly have to bring it up if not to minimize what Michelle Obama was saying? I edited this example in last page, but hopefully it's an egregious enough example that we can all at least agree on: I don't want to Godwin this, but think of this analog: someone it talking about the horrific treatment of Jews at Dachau, and someone pipes up to say "actually, it wasn't only Jews who were killed, and they were treated even worse at Auschwitz-Birkenau!" Who cares? It's not relevant to the point being made, and you look like an asshole for bringing it up even if it is factually correct. There is a big difference between professional historians noting the differences in the camps and David Duke bringing it up in response to eulogies for Elie Wiesel. Just to stress again, O'Reilly is not David Duke, this is an example we hopefully all can agree on being used to illustrate the problems inherent in O'Reilly's response to Michelle Obama. Seems to me his point was just to prove that she was factually correct and he wanted to give a short history lesson on the White House to his audience. Here's the transcript: Ultimately the only thing he seems to have wanted to clarify was that other non-slaves also helped build the White House. I don't know why it was necessary to include that unless ultimately he just wanted to say that the slaves working in the White House, hired by the federal government, were not the type of slaves that were treated horrifically like in the deep south. Again, a dumb distinction in the first place, but not one that appears to be made in a "see, it wasn't so bad!" context. I don't see him downplaying anything there.

QUOTE (CanOfCorn @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 10:53 AM) But who decides? It doesn't matter how a slave is treated. They are owned. They have no control over their own life. Even if they are granted a little extra freedom or are better fed or clothed or housed. They couldn't say, "I can't build this building today, because I need to tend to my farm." Because A) they don't have a farm and B) THEY ARE SLAVES! I'm sorry, but if you don't have free will, then it doesn't matter. Sorry, I can't be swayed no matter how you or Y2HH or O'Reilly wants to argue it. Who decides what? And it does matter how they were treated. You wash away some of the truly awful practices of slave owners if you just view all slaves/owners the same. Some were far, far, far worse than others. That in no way negates the awfulness of slavery itself. Yes, even the best slave owners were still awful people for owning other human beings. That's the baseline we all understand and agree with.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 10:52 AM) Jefferson hired other people to beat his slaves and repeatedly raped at least one of them. He may have expressed a lot of anguish over it in his writings, but it Monticello was still a brutal, awful place. (long article, but I remember it being really good and worth the read when it first came out) Ok fine, bad example. Pick another "better" slave owner that still owned slaves but didn't beat them into submission. We all can agree that slavery is awful and terrible and never should have happened. I think we can also agree that there was a spectrum of slave owners. Pointing that out doesn't downplay or justify the practice.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 10:49 AM) Making that distinction in a meaningful and relevant way in the appropriate forum is perfectly fine. Historians absolutely should and do study regional variations, and contemporary literature from slaves, freemen and whites alike attest to the horrors of being sold "down south" and how it'd be used as a punishment or threat to keep Upper South and northern slaves "in line." Making that distinction in response to the First Lady who is black talking about waking up every day in a house built by slaves makes you an a slavery-apologia peddling asshole, though. There's no other reason for conservative political pundit Bill O'Reilly to bring that up in response to Michelle Obama except to try to lessen the impact of her point about the legacy of slavery. Bill O'Reilly isn't some sort of neo-confederate pining for the Old South and openly going to bat for slavery, but that sort of rhetoric and what it was in response to still has the effect of downplaying the horrors of even the 'slightly less awful' chattel slavery of the Upper South. The author's/speaker's intentions aren't the only thing that matters. If you can make the distinction and it's fine in one setting, how does the effect of that distinction in another setting downplay the horrors of slavery? That makes no sense. You state, correctly, that he's wasn't pining for the good ole days. It appears that he was trying to lessen the impact of what Michelle Obama said about the progress we've made. I agree with you it was stupid for him to do in the first place, but I don't buy that him making a distinction between the treatment of some slaves versus others necessarily means he's trying to downplay slavery in general.

QUOTE (CanOfCorn @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 10:43 AM) There's no gray area of slavery. It is or it isn't. A person should never be "owned." End of story. If you're debating whether slavery is good or bad, sure. But there's a difference between the treatment of slaves by people like Jefferson versus the treatment of slaves in the deep, deep South. Not recognizing and talking about the distinction allows people to be slavery apologists in the first place.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jul 28, 2016 -> 10:24 PM) Im obviously not entirely up to date on everything but my friend showed me tonight, one of my exes is not a "cam girl" online. Apparently shes making a great living, but wow, what a surprise. links or it didn't happen.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 10:34 AM) The discussion was whether or not O'Reilly was peddling standard slavery apologia in response to Michelle Obama's speech (he was), not whether he's racist (he is, but we've known this for a long time for other reasons). Well, to that point, I'm saying I don't think he was being a slavery apologist, I think he was trying to make a dumb distinction between awful slavery and slightly less awful slavery. Making the point that slaves were treated differently =/= slave apologia.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Jul 29, 2016 -> 09:42 AM) Again, why would he make that statement? What purpose does O'reilly saying that s*** besides being a troll or actually being a racist? There's just no need to bring up those "facts" in response to Michelle's speech. My take giving it 30 seconds of time is that he took issue with Michelle Obama claiming that the White House was built by slaves. I think on the one hand he was trying to say that's not a full truth since the White House was also built by non-slaves, and then he wanted to go further and differentiate between "real" slaves in the south versus "well fed, sheltered" slaves in the north. A stupid, unnecessary distinction that really gets you nowhere. It was dumb of him to say. However, I do agree with Y2HH that there's nothing racist about saying it.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politic...ntion/87644542/ Not surprisingly, lots of false claims last night.

via Zach Zaidman

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Jul 27, 2016 -> 02:57 PM) Kinda funny this was posted prior to the DNC speakers ever saying a word and citing Twitter posts? Anyway, two days in and there hasn't been a ton of talk about Trump by the DNC speakers, which is what you'd likely want to compare the RNC speakers to. Then again, the RNC speakers were no better really than any old insane Twitter feed. It was posted during the middle of night one. And I was referring to CNN/AP feeds, though I didn't say it. My bad.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 27, 2016 -> 01:00 PM) He followed it up with a tweet asking the same thing. To score points and to keep bringing up a scandal that involves Hillary and continues to have traction with people. I'm much more concerned about his statement that he wouldn't tell Putin to stop meddling in the US election. And are you talking about this?

QUOTE (Tex @ Jul 27, 2016 -> 12:55 PM) I take that as seriously as I took Perry saying Texas may secede. Agreed. Stupid to say/joke about given Russia IS trying to hack us daily and probably has succeeded, but ultimately I think this is more on the side of Trump being Trump and trying to land a joke about Hillary and her emails, more so than evidence of what Trump will actually do with authority under the executive.