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51

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: May 02, 2019, 08:16:56 am »

This guy certainly could've benefited from RTFM. That's also assuming that the rental included the manual. I've had a rental without one. Most likely this guy was accustomed to cars starting a certain way and was flummoxed by the lack of key. It would've been helpful if the rental car agency showed him how to start the car. I imagine the agent simply brought the car out and left it running, which is why the guy didn't know how to start it.

But there does seem to be a trend to move away from manuals as a default. Maybe we're just getting better at teaching people how to use technology and making interfaces intuitive. For example, when I played a video game in the '80s, I would read the manual first to make sure I understood all my capabilities. Nowadays, games tend to ease players into the instructions. Manuals are mostly used for reference and not instructions.

And actually the keyless ignition follows that trend as well. Sure, he could've read it the manual, but I noticed the dashboard showing those exact instructions to press on the brake and push the button. I'm not sure why he ignored it. Maybe it was a fear of screwing something up, so he didn't want to attempt it. Maybe it's the combination of brake and button that baffled him because those two don't normally go together. No idea. He didn't RTFM, but he could've RTFD.

I just hope I don't feel that helpless at 60.

52

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: May 01, 2019, 09:23:16 am »

When I reach 60 years old, I hope technology has not surpassed me to the point where I have to ask a complete stranger how to start my car.

I parked my car last night and was flagged down by a neighbor. He's 60 years old and been driving the same pickup truck for a while. That got rear-ended, and he came back with a rental, a new Nissan Sentra. And he could not figure out how to start the car with keyless ignition. I was able to show him that. Then he needed to figure out how to open the gas tank. Admittedly, I had a hard time finding that, but I guess another difference between his life experiences and mine is that I quickly concluded that I could find out with a Google search. Once he realized that most of his car questions could likely be solved with Google, he felt better, but that just wasn't the first thing he thought of.

53

General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?

« on: May 01, 2019, 08:08:27 am »

I just wish the time heist was the entire movie.  I could have done without the big battle at the end, honestly.

I'm in the same boat, but I also was bored during most of the recent Game of Thrones episode and the big lobby shootout scene in the Matrix. So I may not be the ideal audience for that.

Mind you, this movie did not bore me. I just wouldn't have missed some of the scenes at the end if they were removed. There were interactions that moved the story along, so that was nice.

54

General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?

« on: April 30, 2019, 02:14:55 pm »

Endgame had about the same rate of plot holes as any other MCU movie, which is to say that I found the movie acceptable. I don't expect perfection from them. The plot holes may be intensified a bit due to the nature of their solution, but I've learned to just stop criticizing movies and shows for taking that route. You're never really going to get that right anyhow.

It was certainly a fun ride.

55

General Discussion / Re: A Song of Ice and Fire [spoilers version]

« on: April 29, 2019, 10:40:01 am »

Seems like necroing this thread is reasonable, although the TV series has diverged from the books, and there has been a lot of TV discussion here.

So I seem to the only person who was actually underwhelmed by the Battle of Winterfell. There were some really good bits in there, and I enjoyed those bits, but the parts in between bored me. I think part of the issue was how it was filmed. A lot of the scenes were dark, up-close, ambiguous, and featured many cuts. Perhaps it was designed to show just how chaotic war can be. A lot of these shots were done with the Battle of the Bastards, but maybe that was less annoying because it wasn't dark.

As far as establishing atmosphere, the darkness and weather did a great job, but it wasn't great for me.

That being said, I enjoyed the highlights.

The Dothraki with flaming swords were a great-looking scene, though it bothered me greatly that their great tactic was to throw the horsemen into a battle with no support so they could be killed and come back as zombies. Actually, I'm not sure they were raised as zombies, but they might as well have been. The scene was beautifully shot, but I feel it was marred by the logistical problem of what they did.

Lady Mormont kicked ass. I loved her killing the giant. No complaints there. It's a pity she had to die, but honestly she had the best death.

I was vindicated when my theory that hiding in the crypt was a really bad idea when facing a foe that could raise the dead. Honestly, I think that scene could've been improved upon by everyone being massacred because that would be a really dark moment where the people who were in the "safest" part of the castle were wiped out. This scene was also foreshadowed by Arya giving Sansa Chekov's knife, though it was never used. That bugs me because why would Arya give Sansa a weapon only to not have it be relevant? Was it just jacking with our meta-knowledge? When they focused on Sansa and Tyrion, I was thinking that perhaps she would sacrifice herself by drawing out the zombies, letting everyone else escape the crypt. I guess I shouldn't call this a highlight since it was my biggest disappointment with this episode, but I can't deny that it was shot well.

And of course, Arya murdering the Night King. This scene was great. I wasn't fond of Theon throwing away his life with such a clumsy attack. They could've at least made his death cooler. But there was some good tension as Arya leapt to save the day, was thwarted in her attack, and then pulled a reversal to provide a satisfying end to the Night King.

The highs were good enough to make this overall an enjoyable episode, but it ranks lowest of the battle scenes for me.

56

Other Games / Re: Pandemic Legacy (probably will have spoilers)

« on: April 09, 2019, 11:28:55 am »

Yes, we abused the hell out of the monitor action as well. To the point that I had to warn people not to use it too much because we want to save it for when it really counts.

As for exposures, I think we only had 5 exposures across the 4 of us. We played a lot with the role that lets you move others before their turn starts. We avoided at least 3 more exposures that way, I think.

I found Box 6 to be really fun, and I imagine that the difference in how well people did may boil down to how much planning they did with this. Well, and maybe the 2 players vs 4 players.

57

General Discussion / Re: TV shows

« on: April 09, 2019, 09:27:00 am »

I watched the first two episodes of What We Do in the Shadows. I was a little apprehensive about the show at first because it had great potential to disappoint. But so far, it's done pretty well. It's as enjoyable as the movie. I dunno. I might even think it's better than the movie, but I'd have to rewatch the movie to make sure.

It plays on the trope of stranger in a strange land. While I get annoyed by overly dumb characters (Jean-Ralphio in Parks and Rec, Kevin in the new Ghostbusters), the stupidity of these vampires doesn't rub me the wrong way. Maybe it's because they're not dumb characters. They are just really out of touch with modern life, and they have this inability to adapt, which is why they have familiars. It's a formula that works.

And I chuckled mightily during the raccoon scene. It's just another example of the vampires being incapable of integrating with society.

58

Other Games / Re: Pandemic Legacy (probably will have spoilers)

« on: April 08, 2019, 02:49:21 pm »

I concur with you on the pacing of the challenges in Season 2. It felt pretty natural.

From what I read, quite a few groups struggled around the March/April period. That was when we had our 3 losses in a row. We considered losing a fourth time to see what was on the card, but pride kept us going, and we prevented four losses in a row.

Box 6 was really handy. Our experience with deckbuilders helped a lot here. We worked on removing infection cards from hard-to-reach cities so we wouldn't need to put cubes on them. But we also focused on removing unnecessary colors from the player deck. For example, we removed a good chunk of blue and yellow because we were busy reconning Africa and Asia. I didn't want to completely remove those colors, and I'm certainly glad we did not.

Box 6 was also a lot easier to handle when I made a spreadsheet to track everything.

We played with 4players, which I've seen people claim is the hardest number to play with. Considering that we had to spread out reward out across more characters, I can certainly see that.

Sadly, we couldn't find all 4 labs until the very end. We found Opal mid-game, which was really great for us. I'm glad that we found it. We knew the other two labs were in the southern hemisphere, but we just weren't finding them early on. Part of the problem, I feel, was a general reluctance to explore too many cities too quickly because that makes it harder to complete the goal of searching 2 cities per game. Since some searches ended up wasting good stuff, being utterly neutral, or even having a negative effect, I couldn't really convince the group to search everything we can.

I'm doing Betrayal Legacy right now, and it's also fun, even though Betrayal is a horribly swingy game.

59

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: April 02, 2019, 05:53:56 pm »

Guys, I want you to admire the sheer awfulness of this video:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2152518584824850

It's an ad for an online game, but I've seen enough complaints from people that I have no desire to download the POS, and I advise that nobody else downloads it either. Just look at this masterful video. What's wrong with it? I think the harder question is what did they do right? Anything? You can mute it. Listening to the audio does not improve the video any, nor does it make the video worse, despite it sounding like a 10-year-old girl punching a stuffed animal.

But let's examine the story here. This woman, whose name is apparently Riffarff, is wrongfully imprisoned for having a fully articulated right ankle. She uses this ankle to her advantage and swivels it around to gain the proper leverage to punch a concrete wall but to no avail.

Then MacGyver walks by and gives her this experimental super-serum in a Coke bottle. This wonder drug causes her to grow a few inches, change her name from Riffarff to Riffraff, and perform a wonder punch that makes the wall bleed gold coins.

This is just the windfall the previously named Riffarff needed, and now she is the queen of her domain, which is only that tiny cell since she still is incapable of punching our metal bars.

The end.

Man, can't wait for the sequel here.

60

General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?

« on: March 28, 2019, 03:42:01 pm »

I went and saw Us this week. I would not agree that it lived up to the hype, but very few movies could handle that kind of hype anyway.

I felt it was a really excellent 3/4 of a movie. It started off strong and dove into the insanity fairly quickly. Once there, it remained intense throughout.

But the ending raised more questions than it answered, and I felt like the only way to reconcile this movie was to accept that weird, magical effects were possible. I mean, when the villains show up, you have to assume that, but the way to reconcile the ending required an even bigger assumption.

It felt to me like they crafted a great scene with wonderful parallels and suitable foreshadowing. But then when asked what caused all this awesomeness, they just shrugged their shoulders and gave some weak reasoning.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed watching it. I still enjoyed the ending even though I recognized how anemic it was. The immediate questions I had were:

How do you feed that many rabbits over 33 years?
Was this lab physically under the hall of mirrors, or is it like some dimensional pocket?
Did staying in the lab make Real-Abbie dependent on the Shadow-Abbie's movements?
How did the Shadow-Abbie get up the operational escalator at the same rate that Real-Abbie descended the stairs?
Where did all the other shadows exit the lab? Did they pour out of the hall of mirrors at once? Just the Santa Cruz ones?
If her family lived elsewhere, then were their shadows lurking in a different lab and move to Santa Cruz?

And that's just scratching the surface. Most of these questions could be answered with "it's magic," but I wanted more. I suppose if they explained it that way, I would've been satisfied. It's just that the movie didn't show much in terms of the magic, so I was left wanting.

It was a really well done movie with a great cast. I just wish it didn't have the feeling of, "This is awesome, but now I don't know how to get to it, so whatever."

61

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: March 13, 2019, 08:07:32 am »

It is a nebulous enough term that its usefulness is questionable.

I've seen it used many times in an attempt to shut someone down. That guy arguing for the legalization of gay marriage? He just virtue-signaling, so we can ignore his arguments. He only cares because his girlfriend does.

It might not even be true, but the mere act of calling someone out on virtue-signaling shifts the focus from the actual argument itself to the person's intentions. With a few choice words, you paint the altruistic as opportunistic. 

It's become one of those internet buzzwords that requires scrutiny because it can be used to effectively shut down constructive talk. See also: Mansplaining, sealioning, SJW.

62

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: March 13, 2019, 12:26:04 am »

Help me remember a phrase... what is it called when you take advantage of a situation to make sure people know where you stand on an issue? Like, if a racist act were in the news, and you post about how you think it was such a horrible thing, because you really want people to know that you think racism is bad.

It’s like lip service, but different. Lip service is more about not doing anything more than just talking about something. The thing I’m thinking of is more about the desire for people to know where you stand.

Virtue-signaling?

63

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: February 28, 2019, 04:28:56 pm »

Noble Brigand shoots arrows at people. Then they gain copper.

Explain.

The arrowheads are made out of copper.

Just because you got to it first doesn't mean you can just brazenly steal my answer, you cad!

Why if I had a copper arrowhead right now, I'd give you such an impaling.

64

General Discussion / Re: TV shows

« on: February 28, 2019, 12:20:40 pm »

Yeah, I was thinking that comparing it to the Princess Bride is not an insult.

But I will agree that both are hyped a huge amount. Are they worthy of the hype? Well, I feel they are, but I can certainly see where others may not.

Like many people, I also watched Umbrella Academy. I liked it a lot. It has that Watchmen feel in that it explores what happens when super-powered people are out there living life with serious personality flaws. Fortunately, these guys weren't as amoral as the Watchmen (I'm looking at you, Comedian), but in many regards, their backstories were darker than the Watchmen. It doesn't help that the founder of the Umbrella Academy was a terrible human being who justified his abuse as part of the greater good. It's like the X-Men if Xavier were an amoral sociopath.

But the characters were pretty cool. They delved into most of their backgrounds to show us why they became the way they were, such as Allison not using her power anymore and why Klaus became a junkie.

The hitmen were a fun pair to watch even though they were awful murderers. They were perhaps more fun to watch than the two angels in Preacher season 1. They griped about bureaucratic decisions that made life harder for them like they were working in a cubicle or in construction.

I wasn't fond of how the season ended, but I can't think of any other way to end it given the storyline. Fortunately I read that season 2 has been greenlit, which is good because that would be a really awkward way to end the series.

I also watched Russian Doll. Nobody warned me that these episodes were only 25 minutes long. I fell into the one-more-episode trap and accidentally watched the entire series 4 hours later. Honestly, this may work best as a binge since it's really just watching a single three-and-a-half-hour-long movie. Since it has the same conceit of Groundhog Day and Run, Lola, Run, it helps to keep these scenes fresh in your memory, especially to see where the characters deviate. It has a couple of interesting twists that were enjoyable to watch.

I recommend Russian Doll, though I admit that the first episode took a while to hook me. I'm not sure why. I just didn't initially feel a connection with any of the characters, but they warmed up to me, and it was interesting to see what happens in the first episode comes back later. Yes, I know one should expect that in a movie about repeating the same moments, but there's something a little deeper here.

All in all, some pretty good Netflix shows.

I'm also watching Deadly Class. Kind of a guilty pleasure at this point. It's a ludicrous concept, but that hasn't stopped me before. Like, why would a secret school for assassins have a cheerleading squad? What sport are they expected to face other schools? Its absurdity reminds me of Snowpiercer. It's a wacky concept, but that concept really only acts as a backdrop for a story about societal struggles. In the case of Deadly Class, it's all about high school cliques in a world where teachers break students' bones and random pissed-off people could show up and threaten their lives. It's very obviously based on a comic, though I've not read it.

What's really interesting about Deadly Class is that the nihilism of the outcasts speaks to my teenaged self. I was never part of the punk or goth scenes in the '80s, but I felt a connection to them as they continually get bullied. That may explain another reason why I'm still watching this show.

I'm also watching Miracle Workers. Daniel Radcliff is nailing it as the socially awkward, mediocre worker. Steve Buscemi is doing a good job at playing a slacker (reminiscent of the Dude, which is interesting considering his role in the Big Lebowski). I was initially amused by Buscemi's portrayal of God, though I'm getting a little tired of his incompetence. I suppose it could be an explanation of why life on Earth is so fucked up, as the angels work tirelessly behind the scenes to put right a world run by an apathetic and incompetent God. I'm finding the scenes with God to be a bit tedious and overplayed while I'm more interested in the two lower angels trying to influence events on Earth with severe consequences thanks to the butterfly effect.

I also started watching Into the Badlands. It doesn't have great reviews, but I always found the commercials to be intriguing. It's an interesting post-apocalyptic setting where guns are universally outlawed, so you get some fancy kung fu. It has a samurai feel with each baron commanding his army of loyal soldiers with one soldier questioning the morality of his duty. Seems promising enough, though I'm only on like episode 3. 

Sheesh, I've been watching a lot TV lately.

65

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: February 25, 2019, 10:15:30 am »

Edit: Turns out I wrote about the same point on here 7 years ago.

On a thread that I started even. These things just bug me because they're easy to correct, but so many people don't want to learn. It bugs the tutor within me. But then if you're convinced you're right, then it's hard for someone to convince you otherwise. But at least be willing to check yourself. If 20 people all told me that you do addition before multiplication, I'd say they're wrong, but the number is large enough that it would make me double-check that something hasn't changed.

But some people have acknowledged that they have learned something new to them, and that makes it worth it. I just wish there were more of them.

And yeah, I haven't seen the division sign used past elementary school. I get annoyed when I see it pop up on those brain teasers because it's not really standard use. I tend to not discuss those.

66

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: February 24, 2019, 02:23:11 pm »

Can you blame them?

W + W + W = 30
W + X + X = 20
X + X + Y = 18

What is V + X * Y?

What, you didn't realise that V was W/2? Expected parentheses that could trivially be added to remove all unneeded ambiguity rather than remember BEDMAS? That's exactly what the 90% of people who fail would say.

What I find funny abot this is that the way these problems are displayed, it makes way more sense for V being sqrt(W), since having 2 variables without anything between them usually means multiplication. 

Yeah, I like to point out that while they probably are looking for V being W/2, that relationship is not defined, so I use SQRT(W) as an example of why it's important to define terms early.

But speaking of PEDMAS (or BODMAS or any other permutation of that acronym), I never learned it that way. I simply learned that multiplication happens before addition with parentheses redirecting priority as needed. I later learned about exponents, and it just made sense to me that you work those first because you can view expressions as adding together a bunch of groups, and of course you do exponents before multiplication. But superscripts help with that. One may question the intent of writing x^3*y, but the superscript easily differentiates between x³y and x^3y. While x^3*y would strictly be equivalent to the former, I would ask for clarification first because I can see where the author could make an unfounded assumption in writing that.

But I feel like the PEDMAS acronym is hurting people in those Facebook math questions. The latest I've seen is 5-5*5+5. People not aware of the order of operations will say 5, but I've seen a lot of people say that the answer is -25. The reason is that you multiply first (5-25+5) and then add next (5-30) and finally subtract (-25). They don't realize that addition and subtraction have the same priority (or that they are in fact the same operation).

Naturally, the commutative property does let you add those in any order, but they think they can add 25 and 5. They don't realize that the term is -25. When people can't remember the actual math, they seem to fall back on the acronym, but they're not using it correctly. I've seen people try to correct them by writing it as PE(DM)(AS) to indicate when priority is equal. I can respect that attempt.

67

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: February 15, 2019, 10:04:01 pm »

Once again I got sucked into another pointless Facebook vortex. I had to caption this.

68

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: February 12, 2019, 11:09:21 am »

People just suck at prefixes, man.

Prefixes are words in front of other words that, while being part of the same term, are still visually divided by a space. An example would be "counter measure"'s "counter". What you mean are antefixes, units that are part of the very same word,such as "ante" in antefix.

I like to make stuff up on the internet for fun.

It was very well done too.

69

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: February 11, 2019, 03:09:41 pm »

The contentious definition of bi-annual has reared its ugly head again. I tried to politely suggest that due to all the confusion that has formed around that word that we refer to semiannual since at least that word is unambiguous (and I hate it when people refer to bi-annual as twice a year).

And then I get proven wrong by someone saying that semiannual means four times a year. I can't guarantee I kept a good enough poker face at hearing that one. But she looked it up and realized the mistake, but it still flummoxed me that that definition has been going around.

People just suck at prefixes, man.

70

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: February 11, 2019, 08:41:28 am »

that may just be the "postman" effect.

What is the postman effect? I tried to read up on it, but all I found was why dogs bark at the postman.

Well, actually I think I meant post office. Basically where one person repeats another person but interjects some possible inaccuracies.

71

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: February 08, 2019, 06:27:28 pm »

Man, it's been 2 days, and they haven't posted the answer yet. I am vexed right now.

Okay, I'm stumped on this riddle. Considering that I'm having a hard time finding it on Google, I question how viable it is. It's not a popular one obviously. It may have originated in England, judging from the use of "dice" as singular, but it might not exclusively be an English thing. Any ideas? It sounds vaguely board-game-y.

I am a king but I do not move one space.
Roll the a dice and I start a fast race.
Begin my reign, I make bucks.
My land is not free, it is my crux.

I almost want to say Monopoly, though that game does not have kings. Perhaps it is used figuratively. But everything else could apply to it.

72

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: February 06, 2019, 12:53:27 pm »

Sorry, I copied this riddle from another source from where I first saw it. I first saw it as an image, which I couldn't copy. In that version, it said "Roll a dice" and I didn't pick up that the second version was different. It does make more sense when it's not a single die, and that may just be the "postman" effect.

73

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: February 06, 2019, 12:14:00 pm »

Okay, I'm stumped on this riddle. Considering that I'm having a hard time finding it on Google, I question how viable it is. It's not a popular one obviously. It may have originated in England, judging from the use of "dice" as singular, but it might not exclusively be an English thing. Any ideas? It sounds vaguely board-game-y.

I am a king but I do not move one space.
Roll the a dice and I start a fast race.
Begin my reign, I make bucks.
My land is not free, it is my crux.

I almost want to say Monopoly, though that game does not have kings. Perhaps it is used figuratively. But everything else could apply to it.

74

General Discussion / Re: TV shows

« on: February 05, 2019, 12:02:46 am »

I watched the first two episodes of Deadly Class. I'm still not entirely certain about the entirely ridiculous premise. It certainly puts forth a lot of style, and that's amusing to a point. It does have Benedict Wong, Henry Rollins, and Brian Posehn, so there is some fame attached to this.

It is chock full of cultural stereotypes and school cliques. To the point where one has to wonder what is a secret school of assassins even doing with a cheerleading squad?

I think I'll keep giving it a shot, if only because really bizarre premises can win me over with their sheer absurdity.

75

General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV

« on: February 04, 2019, 03:50:05 pm »

We were waving our arms out the window of a fast-moving passenger train, acting in an irresponsible fashion until the engineer whose back had been turned and who we thought would find us highly amusing quickly swiveled his head around, and his face which was a paper-white mask of evil sang us this song.