That simulator is awesome. Who had the bright idea to use pop bottles? That's great.

I love the imagery of a succubus with a guitar. It screams punk rock rebel. But I find the Shadow Pinion very frustrating to use. Easier with a controller, but still frustrating.

That has to do with the psychology of the white supremacist rhetoric, and the state of our economy. When you tell people who are economically depressed (people who work hard and feel like they don't have anything to show for it) that it is not their fault because <insert scapegoat here>, and they deserve better, then they kind of like you. Then you just play the champion card, and talk about how bad the <scapegoat> is and all the powerful things you will do to punish them. It is an easy formula that works very well on people who are not smart enough to see through it.

Then there is the cult tactic: convince people that you are the only person they can trust. Then it doesn't matter what they see with their own eyes, they will gaslight themselves for you. This is why Twitter and Truth Social are so important to Trump. Again, works very well on anyone who isn't smart enough to see through it.

Back then (and you are probably not going to believe this) you could do all 3. A coke was only a dollar in those days. You'd just play them single file, and if you were broke, you'd just wait to buy the next one until you'd finished the one before. We used to walk up hill barefoot to the Funcoland to trade in NES carts for pennies to buy our games with.

j/k, I skipped San Andreas, bought Half Life 2 so I have a valid key for counterstrike source. Then my buddy handed me a pirated copy of Halo 2.

Yes I do understand human history, which is how I know that there are bad things that can and are likely to happen. Humans are monsters. We have a very long history to prove that.

But I do think good things can happen too, and that's why I am very interested in the experiment.

Honestly, as I see it a "strange take" is assumption that we are likely missing out on the next would-be Beethoven or Monet because of social media or phones. Historically education and communication helped promote art and science. Seems very weird to me that someone might think taking away a vector for communication would have a positive effect. Certainly worth keeping an eye on though (which I can do thanks to social media)

Gosh, that looks pretty perfect. I guess you could have a second monitor for discord and google. But that's personal preference really. Most people find it distracting. And if you want to get fancy, I like to have a nice coaster for my coffee so I don't damage the surface of my desk. Totally optional, just that's what I like.

I miss Bug and Jackie.

HA! Go get'em Zs!

-Millennial

I have a good problem: Now that I finally have my house, family, car, and career in order, I come home and don't feel stressed and angry at the world. This is completely killing my enthusiasm and aggression in video games.

Arasaka, by far. They are not only stylish but look like a a high tech military. Militech looks like kids who grew up idolizing Nam vets are taking mall cop jobs too seriously. I fully expect one of those pouches to contain a donut.

Well, considering that before the internet there wasn't enough communication for us to be aware of how many people hid in their bedrooms and cried, I'd say yeah, there is a correlation. But correlation is not causation.

Probably not.
But I'd watch the entire experiment closely.
There are some things right off the bat that I would expect to see.
1) Rumors and gossip causing terrible problems.
2) Weird misuses of public communication (think about the Federalist Papers)
3) People finding loopholes to dodge the rules (thing LORA or Ham radio)
4) People becoming addicted to news sources like newspapers.
5) Administrators abusing the communities ignorance.
6) Predators hiding in the safety of the lack of information. (It's a lot easier to be a Nazi or pedophile if the people around you don't know anything about you.)

Some of these come from understanding history. Some from growing up without internet., and a few are lessons that are easily learned from games and books that have explored the ideas in fictional settings.

I would, naturally, hope for the success and happiness of the population. I don't want to see people hurt, or an experiment fail. But I do think it's an interesting idea, and an opportunity to learn about how humans behave.

Of course mental health numbers are on the rise. Do you not remember the stigma against mental health issues? Do you not remember how we used to just call people lazy or stupid when they couldn't do things like everyone else? Those rising numbers represent a change in our culture as we learn to accept that we might have mental health problems and might actually need to seek help.

But she does play. And she could play other things if she wanted to.
Like, my dude, Try to wrap your head around what it would mean if she wasn't playing, and what that would mean.

Sure, you got her a jaguar for grocery shopping. But at least she isn't bumming rides from your neighbors...

They didn't. There was not. Thats all rose colored glasses talking.

Carefree and optimistic are a function of youth and wealth. The young and privledged always feel that way. I think about this often as bills pile and my body aches. I miss that feeling of immortality, when every friday night felt like exciting.

You have me on the divided. The internet exposed the pedos and nazis so it is no longer possible to feign ignorance about the people around you like we did back in the day.

My U740 was hot shit and modern phones just are not as cool.

Uhg, no. I brought the parts of that culture that l liked forward with me (mostly music), and left the garbage behind. There are some things I can never relive, like the first couple years of World of Warcraft, or the thrill of being able to google from my flip phone. But I enjoy the modern QoL too much to every want to go back, even for a minute.

I disagree. 80s and early 90s cartoons were really bad. And we survived the era of the Disney sequels. We might have fond memories of a few good shows, but most were really not. We tolerated some pretty dank crap because the model for media at that time pretty much forced us to just watch whatever was on. Remember, we suffered the invention of reality TV. It was our viewing habits that taught executives that you don't need talent to make TV.

Now, some of the low budget trash that streaming channels are pitching at us is special bad. I don't understand how some of these new shows even make it. But we also have some absolute gems of writing that demonstrate a mastery of story telling. And then we have the Youtubers who are learning how to make content that humans want to watch, instead of formulaic garbage to appease executives. We are in an amazing place where the viewers have the control to decide what to watch and when, which is forcing innovation and quality.

Oh that's a good one. Yeah, how far off are we from kids cyberstalking the mother of their crush to find baby photos. Going to have a future where kids walk into a date situation with a fully history and resume on the other person.

Given our luck, It'll be something stupid like not using physical abuse as punishment.

I'm not that worried about it. We need to solve the problem of transferring digital assets first. Sure, the industry doesn't want us handing our MP3s to our kids, but it has taken them half a decade to figure out how to curb password sharing for streaming. And we are the generation that remembers how it was before they started cracking down. We were the ones viewing source and changing file types. I am pretty certain the media industries would love for us to sit down and shut up so our kids won't know any better about the subscription model for media.

No hate on people playing what they prefer. Just trying to figure out how they got there.

Columbia burnup. I was in Jr. high, school and we watched that live.

I taught high school in 2012 and discovered that no one told the students that Columbine was why they had active shooter drills. Their parents had just kind of sheltered them.

Well, you should download the app. That has the entire rulebook and all of the model rules for free.

There are some games on youtube, so you can watch a game.

And the big one is that you should loop back to the LGS same time next week and see if you can catch those players again and introduce yourself.

And as a bonus, my lgs has a discord, where it's really easy to post and find organized play. You should check and see what your LGS has.

How are you still playing MK2? I am legit curious what caused your local group to not jump to MK 3, and then again with MKIV. You have had no lore, or new models for at least 8 years. What has kept you going?