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Only the best there ever was. -gPuH1yeZ08

I'm not much of a LP watcher, but lately I've been watching a lot of Quill18, ever since I caught his Civ 6 preview that he got to do. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbx1TZgxfIauUZyPuBzEwZg?&ab_channel=quill18 He mostly does Sim and Strategy games, though, so if that's not your thing, you might not have fun. But other than that, he's pretty serious. In a goofy way, but you know what I mean.

Please don't equate Donald Trump with despots and tyrants - he is many things. He is untrustworthy, ignorant, the center of many scams and a media whore - but there is no proof he plans on becoming the king of the USA, or that he is malicious towards it. If you're willing to demonize him you're just creating a situation where lies are accepted as reality, and the demonization of his opponent, Hillary, is far worse - at least when compared to reality. Also, say what you will about the Soviet and Communist rules, they were brutally efficient. You're also correct of them employing a secret police so any criticism was muted, therefore leading to a bias towards them by those objected by that rule. Also, those ruling system as they were implemented were deeply corrupt. The Soviet Union's higher ups' corruption is well documented, while China and North Korea say corruption doesn't exist and they fight it diligently - although evidence suggests otherwise. So, what can we gather from that? Corruption + Communism = bad? We also know that Corruption + Capitalism = bad, as evidenced by the civil war in Ukraine before it was taken over by Russia. I think that neither communism nor capitalism is inherently bad - they were just different approaches to dealing with the same situation, and capitalism lead to more growth that masked the corruption of those in power. Capitalism just leads to more growth due to incentivizing more people to succeed. I think that communism is a good end-of-life plan, though - when most of are jobs will be done by robots and most of the people won't have steady jobs, not because they lack the effort - but because the demand will be lower. Corruption can topple both of these things, whether it's malicious or just in pure self-interest of the corrupt, and it should be the priority of most people to get the power and money away from plutocrats before they stifle the growth towards a futuristic society, or ruin the implementation of a "perfect socialist state" when money is essentially meaningless. The problem with Communism is that it's inherently hostile to human behavior. Since any contribution by a single person becomes little more than a drop in a giant bucket, it completely decentiveses people, since they don't get the constant reward cycle of seeing the direct effect of their work (albeit only in cold dollars, for better or worse). Communism is something that works fine in a small, well-knit community (a commune, if you will) because everybody's efforts directly contribute to that community. This also yields motivation in terms of social capital, since other people will be impressed by your contribution, pushing you to want to do even better. But as the society in question gets too big, your contribution is suddenly going to some dude you'll never meet on the other side of the country, so it starts to seem futile. In that case, your only motivation would be some larger authority getting on your case about not being good enough, which sucks. The biggest sign of failure of a government or a society is when it ends up relying only on negative reinforcement to keep things running, because then people just end up feeling burdened by the threat of persecution, which is hell on productivity. Basically, like you kinda allude to, Communism on a massive scale only really works for a society of robots (like the Borg). Conversely, while the same is true for Capitalism (in that the stuff you do doesn't directly benefit you, but the more anomalous broader society), you do get the motivation of sweet sweet cash. The only problem there is that cash doesn't always correspond to real production. I'd argue that the biggest issue with the modern economy, for instance, is that it's all tied up in just credit and information, which isn't nearly as tangible. That and, naturally, a capitalistic economy isn't as controlled, which can end up leaving people on the lurch when opportunity isn't available. Now, the idealist would say that a responsible person would be able to make their own opportunity and "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", but therein lies the problem with Capitalism and the human condition. See, most basic economic theory operates under the assumption that a well informed producer/consumer will make the best decision (for themselves) when presented with some manner of choice, and that the aggregate of all these self-directed decisions among all actors will lead to posterity on a societal scale. The only problem is that I'm not sure that a truly "well informed producer/consumer" has actually ever existed, so the assumptions break down. Otherwise, there wouldn't be much need for marketing departments. So, for instance, if you assume that people making decisions are, in fact, well informed, then ultimately, if a bunch of people are out buying and selling widgets, they will likely find the cheapest (and therefore, ideally, the most efficient) way to do so. That is, they would find the best way to make it that perfectly balances quality, production, and affordability. The only problem is that the economy and society are so complicated that the best choice is never apparent, or even worse, the best choice for an individual doesn't produce true prosperity for society, since other people don't have the information to be able counteract the effects. It might turn out that making really crappy products makes the most money in the short term, but the person making them doesn't think long term, and thus goes out of business. Or even more worse, the person making them does see this coming, but jumps ship while riding high. Ideally, other people will be able to counteract this, either through making a better widget and succeeding where the first company failed, or recognizing just how crappy the first company's widgets were to begin with, and never buying them in the first place. But like I said, people aren't as rational as the economic models would hope. Just look at the stock market. A company's stock does better when companies make short sighted decisions (like laying off a bunch of people), but less well when companies make smart, long term decisions (like R&D). This only gets compounded when executive pay is tied heavily to stock price (which has gotten even worse ever since CEO pay caps were introduced, as now CEOs tend to be compensated directly with stock options), meaning that an executive makes more money by doing something like just buying back shares or setting large dividends, rather than develop the company (and if they're smart, they'll cash out before it all hits that fan). So, greed is good in that it drives people to do things better (to make more money), but it's bad in that it tends to be really short sighted and not always balanced with intelligent decision making. So yeah, we generally end up meeting in the middle. Where in the middle is the ultimate question, though, isn't it? And ultimately, yes, if we do reach a post-scarcity society where robots do everything and people don't need to contribute to begin with, something like Socialism would work, since why the hell not? Work isn't needed anymore. But then we have a new problem. Wide, large scale apathy and indifference. People need challenges, as otherwise, life starts to seem meaningless. I mean, yeah, we could have hobbies, or we could explore the stars or whatever. But personally, I think we would just end up spending all our time in holodecks. Which is a pretty lame future, if you think about it. But I guess we're jumping the gun a bit if we're worrying about that now....

If you want some more stuff that's like R&M, you could always try Bojack Horseman on the Netflix. It's pretty emotionally draining, though, so watch out. Also, Adult Swim streams the Venture Brothers on their website. That's always a strong recommend for me. VB stream: http://www.adultswim.com/videos/streams/the-venture-bros Or, if you can't access that, they have select episodes up that rotate: http://www.adultswim.com/videos/the-venture-bros/ Just be warned that it's a fairly story heavy show, so it might not make much sense unless you start from the beginning...

While it does seem pretty scummy, I'm gunna have to go with a pretty solid "Eh" on this one. It's a single player game, and I really don't feel like I'm missing out by not getting these micro-transactions, especially since they look like they just make the game stupidly easy. If people want to waste their money on that crap, let them. But yeah, the 1 per save file thing is pretty stupid. Still not sure it's worth bombing the review score, though... Makes me wish Steam has a little more nuanced review system. Something that lets you flag certain categories as being the problem, rather than just the whole thing.

Uh what. New Vegas was always part of the Fallout bundle on Steam. If you're talking about the bundle of 1, 2 and Tactics that bundle is also lacking Fallout 3. Bethesda is not "butchering the lore" nor did they Butcher the mechanics in Fallout 4. Fallout 3 had a higher metacritic score then New Vegas. Also it doesn't matter what the board of Zenimax think, Bethesda has full autonomy in what they do. Yeah, I'm not following this logic. Gameplay wise, everything is a lot smoother, especially the actual combat. I will agree that there should have been more skill checks, and that the dialogue system didn't work out so well, but overall, I've had way more actual fun with Fallout 4 than even 3 and NV. And lore wise, they did okay. No worse than Fallout 2 did, and I feel like overall they improved over 3's lore. I mean, yeah, there's some screw-ups (pre-war jet, X0-01 armor being found in pre-war places, but not Billy the ghoul, because there's no reason to assume that all ghouls act the same because we already know that ghoulification is a crapshoot, but whatever) and some retro-active continuity (But to be fair, with a series like this, not being able to add new stuff because it wasn't in the previous games is a death sentence), but in terms of story, I'd say it's an improvement over 3. I mean, yeah, story wise, it didn't top NV, but it at least showed improvement over their previous efforts.

I don't recall Zenimax or Bethesda ever holding a grudge against Obsidian. Was there something going on behind the scenes or did you noticed something hinting at some sort of grudge? I'm genuinely curious now. As far as I know that's something fans came up with since Bethesda never really mentioned anything about New Vegas in Fallout 4 that meant there is some kind of 'grudge' or something. Just something fans make up to claim Bethesda is jealous of New Vegas despite lacking any real evidence to prove that. Well, except for the handful of New Vegas references in Fallout 4, anyway. Like the New Vegas sign being in the Missile Command game (although I think that was added after the game was announced). Or Deacon referencing Robert House when trying to shut down a robot. Granted, it's not much (I for one am disappointed that they didn't have a Mr. House reference in the CIT ruins), but to be fair, it also takes place several thousand miles away, and only a few years after the fact, so let's call it 50/50. Edit: I forgot, in the Vim! factory in Far Harbour, they (indirectly) reference Nuka-Cola Quartz, and in the new Nuka World trailer, you can see a bottle of Nuka-Cola Victory, both of which only appeared in New Vegas. So there's that, too.

Nah, it would be called Fallout: New N'awlins. And anyway, probably fake unfortunately. Not the first time a fake copy-write has been filed. Especially since it's just a filing, and not accepted or anything. Especially since this has already been talked up a bit, ever since the Obsidian devs first suggested it in that interview linked up top. Also, for the fun of the idea, this would be the trailer song*: *Note: This had previous been suggested on the Fallout reddit, so it's not my idea or anything. I just like the song.

I'd probably have to go with 80's synth pop. It's so catchy and stupid I can't help but be amused. I don't know if I'd say I liked it (I don't listen to it often) but it is definitely entertaining. Especially paired with the music videos. Like what even the hell is going on here anyway? djV11Xbc914 It's a mystery for the ages.... And what about this one? PGNiXGX2nLU They look like rejects from one of David Bowie's weaker music videos. Or like, really stupid Star Trek: TOS bad guys.

Oh cool, who was it? And also, why was he teaching high school of all things?

This was what finally made me quit playing Skyward Sword. When I had to go back and re-do the first temple to get that water for the dragon lady, I finally just completely lost interest. Very disappointed with that game.

This was actually one of the easier to overlook features of Fallout: New Vegas. There were internal achievements that gave little mini-perks based on killing certain enemies, or doing specific things (like kill Mr. House with a golf club, or eat the 4 main leaders). If that feature was a little more obvious, I think it should be used a lot more.

While I agree that story based ones are silly, I kinda like them on Steam at least, since it gives you a rough estimate of how far most people who bought the game got if you look at the global achievements. In fact, I think that might be why the devs use them, in fact. Plus, to be fair, they can be used well. Just look at the "The Part Where he Kills You" achievement in Portal 2! My least favorite achievements are the "kill x things" style achievements, since they are just grindy. The unique achievements (like the gnome one in HL2 Ep 2) are the best, though.

Oh, wow, awesome, did you get to see the Pope speak? Also, you should visit Ross while you're there! It's in Poland, right?

This is honestly one way in which I kinda preferred the skill system in Fallout 4. Because of its perk based nature, and since there were 70 different perk varieties, you could reasonably vary your skill set. The only problem there was that these only affected immediate game-play abilities, but not much in terms of character development. This was rectified a bit in Far Harbour, which showed how this system could be used more effectively than the previous skill system, but it was a bit too little too late. The Science skill determines the character's understanding of physics, chemistry and software engineering because guess what. They're all considered a part of science. Would you rather have a separate skill for rocket science, chemistry, physics, software engineering, Astrophysics, quantum physics, string theory, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, ect...? I certainly don't and neither would you as they would start falling under "useless skills" due to being so many of them. But most people in the sciences really don't have a full understanding of all of science. For instance, I'm an electrical engineer with a masters focusing in electromagnetics. I couldn't "hack" a computer or whatever if my life depended on it. I mean, granted, I see what you mean about it becoming cumbersome to be too specific, but a little more variety isn't too bad. Sort of like how F4 has these things spread among the Hacker, Science!, Chemist, Robotics Expert, and Nuclear Physicist perks, all with their own gameplay specific benefits (making them each useful in their own way). Now, if these could be called upon individually as skill checks (for instance, Nuclear Physicist 2 or Science! 4 to fix a reactor or something), it would probably work really well, and allow you to better define your character.

Pretty cool, glad to hear the DK2 is as much better as folks say. One other question in regards to the motion tracking, though. What are your thoughts on the Virtuix Omni running platform thing they have? I haven't heard much about it other than that it exists, but do you think that it's a viable solution to motion controlling without running into a wall? My main concern, as with VR itself, is with compatibility. However, I have heard some good things, and it looks promising. I just have to wonder if I'm a big enough of a dork to have one of these things sitting in my apartment.

Oh yeah, it's really disturbing. I tried to explain it to one of my EE professor's once, and he looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out of my ears.

Ouch, my friend has that, and he can't even drink water. He has to drink Crystal Light instead, since the sugars help for some reason.

Sometimes bad things just happen, regardless of who you are. That's the whole point of the Biblical book of Job. On the plus side, bad things can proceed good things. In high school, my best friend's house burned down one day while we were all hanging out in Chess club (which, incidentally, probably wouldn't have happened had he been at home). At the time, it seemed horrible. We all spent the weekend cleaning up the charred remains of his home, and it certainly seemed like a low point in life. But after a while of having to live in a hotel with his family, things got better, and honestly, they all ended up better off at the end of the day. It may seem dark now, absolutely terrible, but it will get better. Heck, in a decade or so, it will probably just turn into a funny story. But in the mean time, just try to push through it, and help fix things the way you can. Also, I don't know if it will help, but I would recommend going and watching the Bob's Burgers episode "Tina-Rannosaurus Wrecks". I dunno if it would help, but it's a funny episode, so that's good too.

Catholics aren't the ones who take the Bible literally (at least in terms of the Church itself). The Vatican tends to support the ideas of evolution and the Big Bang. Granted, it's a big group, so there's certainly a wide variety of stances on the subject (for instance, like BTG's stance on literalism, as an example of how stances can vary among Catholics). That's why I generally enjoy Catholicism myself, since it is often very academic in it's theological approach, especially in the modern era.

Wasting all my time trying to figure out what to do with my time. I've got nothing, so far...

I've only had one real smart phone (which I mostly just used as an MP3 player, since I was too cheap to get a service plan). However, that stopped working after I too dropped it. The weird thing is that the screen didn't break or anything. It just won't turn on anymore. At best, I can get it to come on for a split second when I put the battery in, but that's it. It's weird. And it's not the battery, since I tried someone else's and it still didn't work...

Ross, here's something for you. It appears that the Grickle channel has started a Patreon, but he's not reached the value he set out to obtain yet. Perhaps you could help, with your fancy internet fame? Video below:

I think it's pretty safe to say I already am. I'm under the impression that finding someone is completely unrealistic and even if I did they're probably looking to cheat me out of money or something. I don't have any good faith in this if I'm being perfectly honest. What I don't appreciate is that despite me knowing all of this and being skeptical as all hell my brain's primal instincts have decided that they're going to make these decisions for me and that going through all this asinine BS would be a worthwhile thing to do for whatever reason. Then they make me feel bad when I choose not to listen to them. Cognitive dissonance is fun. I dunno, that does sound a bit too cynical. You have to imagine that most other people are just trying to satisfy the same urge for companionship as you are. Money stuff tends to evolve more over time as circumstances come up, but even then, sometimes you just have to take that chance. Getting close to someone will always put you in a vulnerable position, but it may still be worth it. Not that I'm necessarily good at taking that advice myself, either... But I can definitely empathize with that feeling of never finding someone to open up to. Although in my case, the reasons are different, of course. God I miss having IRL friends, they all moved away so I'm all by myself in the middle of nowhere. I've been feeling so alienated and frustrated since then because the people I could talk to aren't anywhere near on the same level as me. Maybe that's why I've been feeling so sensitive to this stuff lately. I think I'm going to try and take a breather for a bit. I'm practically fucking hysterical at this point. Having moved to a new city about a year ago, and not knowing anyone else here ahead of time, I can totally know what your talking about. Being in such a new place away from most everyone I know can drive me a bit stir crazy too. Having recently gone back home for a week really did a lot to buoy my spirits, though. Maybe you should do that same. Get back in touch with your roots for a bit, you know? It's weird, having left school, it's been very difficult for me to find new friends outside of work. It's pretty difficult, I guess, since most folks here have already established themselves into their own cliques, so it's hard to break in to those groups. Plus, I admit that I also tend to have trouble liking a lot of people these days. I've become to sensitive to alienation from others, I guess. Makes me miss college, kinda, not that I can recapture that anymore, either....

Yeah exactly, how many years would it take for me to find that one? Those years spent are what scare me. Oh look I've just spent 7 years trying to look for the girl of my dreams instead doing something more productive/interesting like programming. How much of that time spent adds up to something? What if my work is my GF in a way? I'm overly attached to it, constantly giving it a ton of attention and I don't want to leave it for something else. Well jeez, it's not like you'd be spending every waking moment on it. Just, like, some. Don't think of it like a job, think of it like recreation. Going and meeting people and stuff (as miserable as that sounds). Or you could try the online dating, not that it's helped me at all. That speeds things up a bit. Or at the very least, it would make you so cynical that you stop caring about it. Whatever works, you know?