domain:cafeamericainmag.com
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
5hr ago
faceh
5hr ago
Hah, I've been pretty convinced that my hair is thinning around the temples for the past 4ish years.
I'd go back and look at photos of me from college and try to guesstimate if I've lost a couple millimeters.
I considered using some kind of marking system to see if there was any retreat. But I'm 36 now, and hair is still pretty thick, so even if I lose a bit on the Temples I doubt its a real concern.
Also, apparently the convergence of techs available now mean that you really can get your hair growing again with some investment of time and money.
Thoroughlygruntled
5hr ago
Every third person I saw walking around Istanbul on a recent vacation was a foreigner with a bandaged hair transplant or nose job.
Thoroughlygruntled
5hr ago
Philosphers with the power to imprison people who are rude to them. They're more like Philosopher Kings of England--powerful by force of ancient custom, if not by force of arms.
POOPIDIOTBALDMAN
5hr ago
I enjoyed reading this, for whatever that's worth, but I'm left wondering what you actually believe. Ok, you're a natalist and support "eugenics", but what does this mean in terms of public policy for you? It kinda reads to me like you're Hanania-adjacent.
Thoroughlygruntled
5hr ago
Agreed, though I think Gorsuch's writing style is mostly a calculated folksy affectation. Still annoying if that's not your bag, but he's very clearly going for a "less strident and elitist Scalia" image.
gattsuru
5hr ago
Even the best Final Fantasy are beautifully flawed -- anyone that thinks VII was perfect can shove it up Guard Scorpion's tail. XII's world always struck me as much more interesting than its plot, just as the combat itself seemed more interesting than the gambit system you end up spending more time working around (though I've long been a Tales of fan so I may be judging the gambit system a little too harshly).
Agreed that the remake is in an awkward place. Like X and XI, it's in that awkward early stage of 3d work that's just high enough quality that it can't cruise on retro feel or imagination, but still so low-res that it's painful to watch and not easily vastly improved with emulation and upscaling... while the remaster also screwed around with enough of the systems that it's not a clear upgrade from gameplay perspectives. I prefer job systems in general, since some of my favorite games in the series have been FFXIV and the original FFT (and arguably Legend of Mana, though handwaves), but it definitely moves away from the learn-and-automate feel of the original. I'd guess that it was set that way under the assumption you'd have played the original enough that it'd just be repetitive? But that's not really right, either.
That said, both the original and remaster seem like they've been big sources of Lessons Learned for other games in the series, so well worth knowing just for that (in contrast to something like FFType0).
Hope you enjoy the Switch 2.
Hadad
6hr ago
Ah, no. Funding is not the reason I oppose any of that. We could have infinite money and I still wouldn't support Ukraine or left-wing pet projects. I do not think wealth is ever what's really holding us back.
Hadad
6hr ago
And it's not even that I disagree with you on the object level. Just - it looks a lot like you did indeed say that.
There is an entire post you had to excise to quote one specific line. Perhaps you could look at the entire thing, and not reduce my message to a single statement!
gattsuru
6hr ago
I'd like to believe that, but Gorsuch wrote Vanderstok: solely a textual interpretation of statute, very well-documented and very clear law, also a complete duck because it'd be unpopular.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
6hr ago
Ted Cruz is a voting member of the Senate Committee responsible for US policy in the greater Middle East. So knowing the approximate population of America's main adversary in the region is basic job-related knowledge. "I'm not good with figures but I know it's a lot bigger than Iraq" would be an acceptable answer if Ted Cruz is, indeed, not good with figures.
gattsuru
6hr ago
The minimum sentence under state law for a single one of these acts would have had the exact same punishment. So it's either no effective increase in sentence for the third (conviction for) rape, or someone who committed enough (almost-certainly repeated) rape of two very young minors, after having been caught by DNA evidence, would have been allowed to plea to a much lesser crime than a single one of them.
Which isn't better.
((On the upside, pretty good chances it's a life sentence, no matter what the court decided! Though from a rule of law perspective, not too happy about Kennedy v. Louisiana ending up there, either.))
Maybe it'll have some marginal impact on parole hearings, but I think NJ's 'mandatory minimums' restrict parole eligibility, too.
Iran has 80% VPN penetration. How is that a "small, wealthy, and unrepresentative set"? Although I can be wrong, I'm specifically stating that this isn't just a narrow elite - that the Iranian people are majority friendly/not anti-American islamists.
Thomas Dewey
What are you referring to? I didn't understand but would like to!
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
6hr ago
FF12 was when the series began to die for me. The gambit system is un-fun because then the game is just playing itself, and the game really pushes you hard into using it. I tried to play manually but it sucks because you have to keep switching characters (rather than the game auto-switching when their turn comes up), and it gets too hectic to keep up with that anyway. The writing is kind of a mess too; I played all the way through and couldn't figure out what had happened in the story until I read a summary on Wikipedia. Good characters and world though.
veqq
6hr ago
For context, I mentioned that I support regime change/oppose the government because people misunderstood my criticism of the government as "defending". I don't especially advocate for Cruz/Trump driven-regime change though I'd pray for its success.
Hussein was secular, Gaddafi was secular, Assad was secular...
Indeed. The powers that be do not care nor wish for human flourishing (to the extent they had good policies). Replacing the Khmer Rouge with something less bad is a net win for humanity, even if international recognition doesn't improve.
No total regime collapse? No neighboring countries swooping in to setup a puppet state? No civil war? No refugee wave?
I was describing the current situation, to explain apathy/lack of significant reformist movements. A civil war would naturally create a large refugee wave, but we don't know whether continued force will cause regime change nor what any of this looks like. As I stated before, I'm skeptical of the current admin's ability to engineer a positive outcome.
Syria ... "doctors and engineers"
Syrians were at a "higher" cultural and educational level, than other Arab countries. The "issue"'s that they supported the regime and didn't emigrate, which motivated groups deftly left out.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6hr ago
This seems to be built into the system from the start
A necessity of elected political leadership is that they are elected, which is going to tend to select for electability rather than expertise. With appointees one expects a measure of expertise (and you even get it occasionally), but people like senators or the president are necessarily going to be amateurs and generalists. They have staffers and career civil servants to provide them with expert advice.
Perhaps it's just another sign of how completely warped the federal government has become compared to what the Founding Fathers had in mind.
The first cabinet was full of talented amateurs. The first Senate was basically a collection of lawyers and planters/rich farmers.
WhiningCoil
6hr ago
This is straining my memory some, but I recall the gambit system in the original game being much more finely tuned than Zodiac Age. It only gave you the option of automating poisona for instance, after you'd spent a dungeon manually curing poison in combat. In Zodiac Age you can purchase all the gambits right from the jump, letting you automate everything immediately. I recall the original had this effect of, as soon as a task got tedious, the option was available to automate it. In Zodiac Age the game feels like it's playing itself more.
I did find I was constantly tweaking my gambits, most on account of status effects. Another difference I remember was that with the OG license board, I could give all my characters some low level spells, like Protect or Shell, so the whole party would work together to keep those protection spells up. In Zodiac Age, you tell your single white mage in the part to keep everyone protected, it's virtually all they do it takes so long to cast 3 times in a row, and then it's nearly worn off! Meanwhile they aren't healing or curing status effects.
I donno, I think some of the quality of life features in Zodiac Age actually made the game worse in ways that are counter intuitive.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
6hr ago
Thoroughlygruntled
6hr ago
I think Gorsuch is a kind of hyper-textualist (sometimes to the exclusion of other indications of original public meaning), and the difference between his positions here and in Bostock can mostly be chalked up to the fact that Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause do not, in fact, say the same thing. Title VII is explicitly broader than the Equal Protection Clause in a way that Gorauxh finds dispositive.
I think he was wrong on Bostock to ignore the fact that literally no one thought Title VII had anything to say on the trans issue when it was enacted, but it's a legitimate opinion that other good-faith conservatives and libertarians I know agree with. And Gorsuch hasn't generally shown himself to be a beltway clout-chaser in my opinion. Certainly nothing like Roberts or Kavanaugh. If anything, he has an almost autistic tendency to stick to his guns when he's saying something unpopular.
sun_the_second
6hr ago
There was only one Venerable at a time, from what I recall. In addition to just how plain hard it is to become one, enough that their reigns were nowhere near consecutive (they collectively were only alive for no more than 10% of total known history), the first thing a Venerable would likely be doing at any given moment is making sure no one else is strong enough to become one.
sohois
6hr ago
FFXII was such an incredible disappointment after X. Starts off really well, but after 10 hours you realize the only gambits you need are low health > heal and attack, and there is absolutely nothing of interest when it comes to building a character. The licence board was entirely pointless. All that was left was the story, which as you say became incomprehensible very quickly
HereAndGone
7hr ago
Being the one single strongest person might well content him, or he might find it boring after all that now he's achieved ultimate power and there's no place higher to go.
Were the Venerables vulnerable to one another, or was there only one at a time? If he proves that it is possible to become immortal, then that is a strong incentive for others who reach the highest ranks to keep on trying to reach that rank as well, and if there are two Immortals, can they co-exist? Will they be able to damage each other, or would that be impossible?
But that would be a whole other novel, I imagine.
yofuckreddit
7hr ago
I think that'd be the difference. Your approach is great for actually getting better and building confidence. For benchmarking, I'd argue it's not providing as much value.
HereAndGone
7hr ago
I had no idea who Natalie Winters was, so the parody/whatever flew right over my head. Now it turns out she's some White House correspondent or something and she did something dumb? Well I'm sure no journalist or media pundit ever has done anything dumb before, so naturally that makes it newsworthy.
I can't fully answer that question without major spoilers! In fact, this admission of my inability to do so itself constitutes a spoiler, but what else can I do since you asked?
To keep it as spoiler free as possible, each Venerable, while they were alive, were the only ones of their kind. They didn't overlap, and while dominant, prevented anyone else from having any hope of rising up. This has a proper mechanical explanation too, and not just for want of trying.
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