Best posts made by Vorpal

... I'm getting real tired of your shit, 2016.

Well, you know that in my country of origin people are persecuted by the government for criticizing or speaking ill of the president over social media, there are gag laws that forbid the press from touching certain subjects in an unfavorable light and the president has sued, won, and appropriated newspapers after they were critical of him?

Tennyson is right, I do think- most Americans don't really know how good they have it. German and French speech (to pick two of the mentioned countries, because I only have so much time >_< ) aren't as free as most assume. In France, for example, it is an offense to insult the national flag or anthem (there goes Penn and Teller's 'burning the flag' segment), and you also can't insult or make fun of anyone who serves the public under the restrictions of "offending the dignity of the Republic"- which is probably why, to Eddie Izzard's surprise, the French had not developed the art of stand-up comedy by the time he took his act there (seriously, though, Eddie Izzard is a god.) Positive portrayal of drugs is also punished- newspapers and magazines criticizing drug laws and arguing for drug reforms get hit over and over by the government with penalties and sanctions.

In Germany, Insult is punishable under Section 185, as well as the use of symbols of 'Unconstitutional Organizations' (initially the Swastika, but expanded to any organizations the government comes to consider unconstitutional.) It also punishes disparagement of the Federal President (section 90), the state and its symbols (90a), Organs and Representatives of Foreign States (103), insulting of faiths, religious societies and organizations dedicated to a philosophy of life if they could disturb public peace (166) and dissemination of pornographic writings (section 184- there goes fanfiction.net.de!) Assemblies must be registered beforehand, and groups can be banned from assembling- like banned political parties.

That's a small handful of things, really... and while America has its own ugly snags (and this post is in no way an attempt at waving them away), comparatively speaking I'm going to stay with it. I thought the perspective of an outsider who is becoming an American by choice might add something to the discussion.

@Arkandel This totally does sound like a mid-life crisis. Often along the lines of "I've wasted my whole life doing what everybody wanted me to do and I never went after what I really wanted. Oh, if I could recapture the glory days of my youth..." etcetera etcetera etcetera.

I'm familiar with this because my ex-boyfriend (who is only 29) just went through a mid-life crisis at the quarter-life point and basically tried to contact me so we could get together, reminisce, hang out, and ultimately have sex to recapture those oh-so-rapscallious days of our twenties.

I told him to talk it over with my husband, and that was pretty much the end of that. But yes, dealing with someone who is going through that is incredibly frustrating if you're not cutting enough.

... am I the only one who had a crush on Nitro?

Asking for a friend >_>

@somasatori I guess the assumption was that, because I wasn't doing it as my day job, it wasn't my real job at all.

Mind you, in a way there's a reason for that assumption- because if you intend to make something your profession, people assume that you're going to be doing it as your main endeavor. Because some creative careers have specific obstacles that make that not an immediate "thing" to do right away as the only thing you do, it can seem to some people that it's just something you're doing on the side for fun instead of your vocation, if you catch my drift.

It's still rather irritating once you get asked about it for the millionth time, though.

Over here in my state, there seems to be an epidemic of cyclists who fragrantly disregard the rules of the road. I regularly see them riding two to three to four abreast, even on major streets instead of riding single file... because I guess you just have to have that cycling buddy chat. I see more cyclists willingly ignoring Stop signs and engaging in traffic tomfoolery because they think they can get away with it due to their vehicles being small and very maneuverable- while disregarding that if you cross in front of a car who has the right of way and they're going 40MPH, all of that is worth diddly squat when it comes to peeling you off the road.

So, of course, when someone causes an accident because they're not following the rules of the road, the "Share the road!" people start screaming their heads off. But in my time driving in Colorado, I have seen more cyclists flagrantly breaking the rules of the road than I have seen drivers on average... and I live in a university town full of drivers from all kinds of states, and they usually lose their shit when Colorado does what Colorado does and hits them with insane weather during Winter and Spring (a season that should really be called "Surprise!" here).

There's something about the smooth lines of the bike that make people think they can behave like a vehicle and a pedestrian at the same time, while expecting to be treated like a vehicle. It's disconcerting.

And then, there's the "cool dudes" on motorcycles who like to swerve in between lines of cars going 70MPH on the highway because they totally can't die, right?

SOMEHOW, I managed to lose a cell phone between exiting my job, walking twenty feet in an open parking lot to get into the car, and then walking twenty or so feet to get to my apartment, and it is MAGICALLY nowhere to be found.

Grrrrrr.

@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:

The new Star Wars movies seem to work really well - and they are led by ladies. Ray isn't a great heroine, she's a great character, and I can't wait to watch Rogue One when it comes out. Would I have liked a kick-ass Jedi guy spinning lightsabers? Sure, I watched Anakin do it for two movies and it was kind of blah, not because he wasn't male enough but because those films sucked. Conversely I can't bear to watch Aeon Flux or Resident Evil, but that's not because females star as action heroes in those, it's because they were horrible!

Why did you have to remind me Aeon Flux was a thing? Dear god, that movie was the cinematic equivalent of a Greyhound station bathroom in Amarillo, Texas.

Honestly, if I were Disney, that's more or less what I would do, too. After the Fantastic Four, I'd be tweaking some characters to hell so they wouldn't necessarily fall afoul of the licensing agreement, but so that I could have an iteration of them that isn't part of ... that whole thing.

I mean, it's not like I couldn't retcon them back into their old selves when/if I get them back, because Wanda is kind of a walking cosmic etch-a-sketch.

When you pitch in to help a co-worker who has fallen behind because the switch to the new system has added some unexpected delays, and your boss recognizes you and orders you lunch from the nice place across the street.

@Thenomain now if they could just get the game to be at the level of Sims 3 and the open world... that'd be great. I have Sims 4, but I find myself playing 3 more often because going into 4 after 3 feels a lot more constrained.

@VulgarKitten I understand. I'm losing my mom to cancer.
Unfortunately, 'fairness' is a completely human concept and it has nothing to do with the universe at large... the universe isn't fair or unfair, it simply is, and sometimes it sucks donkey balls.

I'm totally not prepared to lose my mom, but the universe don't care

@Roz I'm so sorry for your loss, man.

I have to admit I just... hated most of the new Star Trek movies. I mean, as movies go, they're fine, but they're not fine Trek movies. They definitely feel like Star Trek by way of Star Wars, with a lot of the thoughtfulness replaced by a lot of action - it's a thin veneer of Star Trek stretched over something that could easily be another franchise, and quickly forgotten if it didn't have the brand recognition. Then again, that could be said about most of Star Trek.

That being said, the moment I saw Abrams' first Trek movie, I had the impression he was auditioning for Star Wars. I do think his touch is far better geared towards Science fantasy shootouts., and it definitely found itself at home with Star Wars.

Yelchin was great, though. I always enjoyed him, even if I didn't enjoy how off-model the universe he inhabited felt.

I've never really seen any evidence that confirms the existence, or even the possibility, of the 'paranormal'- even as much comfort as it could give me to think that, for example, my mom will continue to exist as herself after she dies.

But I've really seen no real body of evidence that supports claims of the supernatural- with every claim of either supernatural phenomena or abilities disintegrating under serious scrutiny, with the aforementioned abilities somehow being incapable of being replicated under controlled conditions. James Randi's challenge has remained unconquered now for decades.

I don't deny that some things happen which appear to be supernatural, but most of the time they're either psychological, or perfectly explainable by science- even if it takes a long while to figure out exactly what the hell was it that happened- such as the recent discovery that infrasound may be linked to the trend of ghost sightings by, basically, flipping a survival switch in our brain when the infrasound frequencies resemble the low spectrum of the growls produced by certain predators.

This has led me to conclude that the popularity of Barry White and the explosion of ghost sightings in the seventies were not coincidental in the least.

I think you might be assuming a conclusion I haven't really championed, though.

Yes, ghosts and demons and such aren't real. They simply can't be, based on the rather sizable amount of what we know about our universe (magic doesn't work, outside of pelvic sorcery). That doesn't mean we never ask the question "Well, if they didn't see angels, then what made them 'see' angels?" The starting point isn't the supposition that the supernatural might be real, but rather that there is a real, observable, physical phenomenon that is explainable by matters other than the supernatural. That's how you find ergotism, but if you assume the impossible might be real, that's when you find yourself championing cardboard fairies like poor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

It's more along the lines of "Ok, you claim these people are possessed by the devil and can't stop dancing? Ok, you go ahead and prove that to me. In the meantime I'm going to investigate and see what could possibly have induced these- wait a minute, what the fuck is that thing growing in the rye?

It's more of a Scooby Doo and the gang approach (ghosts aren't real so let's find out what really is happening) than a Discovery Channel ghost hunters (ghosts are real, let's catch them on film) sort of thing.

That thing when your husband knows he has asthma and allergies.

And he still gives the pet a bath without a face mask or any protective gear.

And then you're at the ER at 5 a.m. because he can barely breathe, you've had four hours of sleep, and have work in two hours.

Today is going to fucking rock.

@Lithium said in [Do you believe in paranormal things?](/topic/1138/do-you-

Every living human has an energy field, this is known, it's been hard proven with science and technology both. Since energy cannot truly be destroyed, that energy has to go /somewhere/ and we have no idea where that energy goes yet.

Well, what do you think happens during the process of decomposition and breakdown?
There's a lot of misconceptions between what the layman considers an 'energy' and what scientists mean by 'energy.' The skeptoid put it best, honestly. " There is no such thing as an energy field; they are two unrelated concepts. Nor is there any evidence or sound hypothesis suggesting the body emanates some type of intangible cloud. If we really wanted to stretch definitions, we could say the human body has potential energy. Everything that has mass and is within a force field has potential energy, like a rock within the Earth's gravity."

The reality is far, far more mundane. No, there is no force that surrounds us all and which will keep us alive after we die. We are a byproduct of our high evolutionary history, everything we are comes from the proper functioning of our bodies, and when they die all systems break down- and we cease to exist. There's no supernatural 'me' left behind, because the 'mind' that makes who I am is a byproduct of the functioning of the physical brain in roughly ( simplified and not exactly, but sufficiently enough for this comparison) the same kind of relationship between hardware and software. The hardware dies, the software doesn't stay floating behind in the air, a ghost made up of zeroes and ones (even software that's out on the internet is using someone's hardware to exist, and when it powers down it goes poof- we can't hold seances for offline software). Unlike computers, however, our particular 'software' is intricately tied to our physical hardware, we are biological machines and can't transfer ourselves. Yet.

Now, if we want to talk about the possibility of transferring 'minds' in the future through some sort of scientific advance where we can digitize our brain data... ok, that could potentially count as 'immortality' of some sort- but not quite. A copy would still be a copy, the 'me' who is currently in this body will still die, it will know what it feels to die when that body dies, even if a copy of 'me' is uploaded somewhere. Which sucks for the 'me' me, if not for the copy, but I will still cease to be- my body won't suddenly die and I will awake in my new Robot Overlord body. There will be two of me, and then there'll just be one. (*)

Consciousness and 'self' as they currently exist (unless there is some amazing breakthrough with quantum or biological computing) are phenomena that is a byproduct of biological function unique (so far) to our bodies. When the organic hardware ceases to function, consciousness dies.

footnote (*): this is where the realm of speculative sci-fi could have a field day. Our 'software' - our consciousness and personality- depends so much on our chemistry that any transference would have to be to a machine that can replicate those conditions quite faithfully. As someone married to someone afflicted with bipolar disorder, I'm all too familiar with how subtle changes in brain chemistry can alter personality and traits- sometimes quite dramatically. It would be interesting to explore, in fiction at least, how much personalities can change after a transference or copy of a personality unto a faulty recipient. There's a story waiting to be written there. A variant of the 'evil twin' take, except the evil twin is, in some respects, you.

Hello, guy sunning himself on his lawn in a speedo. Yes, you're pretty damned hot. Unfortunately that speedo is way too small. Your Weinerschnitzel clearly thought the same thing and decided to make a break for freedom when you fell asleep on your lawn chair while you tanned. I didn't need to see that during my walking break.

@Coin said in RL Anger:

@Vorpal said in RL Anger:

Hello, guy sunning himself on his lawn in a speedo. Yes, you're pretty damned hot. Unfortunately that speedo is way too small. Your Weinerschnitzel clearly thought the same thing and decided to make a break for freedom when you fell asleep on your lawn chair while you tanned. I didn't need to see that during my walking break.

Maybe it was a little raw and he wanted to cook it a little...

That's gonna hurt when it start to peel.