Kiroen

Understand that I'm going to be legitimately pissed off If you accuse me of being the one who started the off-topic, when everything I said in my first post was directly meant to answer OPs questions, while your very next one's only purpose is to discuss the off-topic. SPECIALLY If you proceed to give a warning for following your example, even before that I had the opportunity to reply; ONLY to keep discussing the off-topic after you have called it to an end, and finishing it with a "You started first".

I was talking about the roles society attributes to each gender. Are you implying that the biological, genetic differences justify the contemporary gender differences in roles? Which ones, then? I don't see where's the contradiction? The fact that it's satisfying for a lot of people doesn't mean that it isn't promoted by the society's culture. If they are mere stereotypes, and not statistical trends, companies are doing something terribly wrong with their advertising. Or I have missed several years of TV where men's cosmetics and clothing commercials boomed to the point of jumping out of it and obnoxiously sinking in the soup. Edit: Hadn't read this when I started the post. But maybe you should check again who started the off-topic.

It's amazing to see that I'm terribly late to the thread, even though it was started today There's something that has been said several times, but maybe summing it up in a short phrase will help: Don't look for potential lovers; look for potential friends. Even If it may sound contradictory, that mindset makes the process faster. By meeting more people, it becomes more likely that you find someone with whom a relationship may work (pure statistic); in the other hand, If you look for a potential lover, you'll be more likely to fall in love* with someone that wouldn't go out with you - thus getting you stuck in a non-relationship dynamic for some time. (*I mean the "falling in love at first sight" way, which is usually unrealistic and impractical, since your mind fills the gaps that you don't know about the other person with an idealistic, but fake view). As for the gender roles: while we, progressive, free-thinking individuals (so cliche) know that they suck and we'd be better without them, being a guy and being too shy or not being confident closes you a lot of doors (...not having self confidence is terrible in a lot of ways whatever sexuality you have, too, but back to the point). On the another hand, a lot of hetero-normative couples don't work because they fall so deep in our societies' gender roles ( footballgetdrunkbeisbolmotorbikesgitdrunksportssportssportsgtednruk / suchfashionbuyclothesbeautymoreclothes ) that they eventually find out that they have nothing in common; they started going out because it was normal according to their society's myths, it worked because they liked sex, and once their jobs' stress takes that away, they find themselves stuck in a marriage with someone they don't really like that much, but the divorce means economic difficulties and problems for their children (If you think this is too cliche, you're lucky. My uncle (who is around his fifties) has very few childhood friends that haven't gone through this process already). My conclusion on the matter is that it's unavoidable to go through some roles (unless you're lucky enough to find a really open-minded / intelligent / progressive partner), but basing your whole relationship on them is signing its own death sentence. As to the idea that women are less intelligent, it's being proved wrong as time goes by. I can't find the source, but the following experiment was conducted: Group A and B have both male and female students. Both groups have to pass a test of mathematical and logical problems, but before the test, the Group A is told <<Women are statistically worse than men at math and science>>; while the Group B is told <<It is proven that women are statistically as good as men in math and science>>. In the results of Group A, male students got 10 out of 100 points than female students in average, while in the results of the group B, female students got 0,5 out of 100 points more than male students in average. It's a very small example of how the society's myths changes what people ends up being. Yes, you will find more successful male scientists and engineers, but the numbers will be balanced to perfect equality as soon as we start banishing these myths.

Mankind suddenly becomes intelligent enough for Reality TV shows not being profitable anymore - however your sister is displeased, and now dedicates her free time to spy you, in order to satisfy her need of gossips. I wish I liked lemonade again so these lemonade bottles don't go to waste.

Banned for being a video game character from the 80s

Add me to the list - even though it's not saying much. Asperger's is, sadly, just that: a syndrome, a stupidly huge group of symptoms that psychologists put together because there were statistics that pointed towards the possibility that they could be related, up to the point that both a borderline autistic and someone who's had almost not a single meaningful problem in his or her life (because of the symptoms) fall under the same category, even though their characteristics may be caused by different physiological reasons. Why is it sad? Because it's an impractical, useless categorization when it comes to find solutions to the problems that the symptoms may cause. In my case, I was unaware of double meanings, certain jokes, subtle social interactions in general that I didn't care about until some point at high school. That led to bullying at some points (and its consequences: lower self esteem, social seclusion, and other bs that it's not cool to talk about), until I finally decided that, If I was to find interesting people at some point of my life, it would be for the best that my social skills didn't suck, so I started paying attention to other people's gestures, tones, reactions; and later analyzing and practicing myself in front of a mirror. Like If I was researching the subject of "how to be socially successful among all of these morons". The process was really slow, and it would take ~3-4 years to culminate. When I was starting, I was aiming for a state grant to join international Baccalaureate, so I joined the high school in which I could take it one year later. The first confrontations of the ideal life I was imagining for myself with reality was, as it should be expected, disappointing. I lost interest for it before it even started, I didn't have any interest in meeting people, and, at the first new signs of bullying, I turtled myself - but at least it didn't go too wrong. Instead of getting into an abusive dynamic, this time I was fast to reply back to "jokes" (If you can call something with such terrible intentions a "joke") and I developed a fame of being an honest, but prepotent asshole. That, united to the fact that I frequently engaged in discussions with the teachers, simply because I hated the idea of having an authority figure giving diffusion to their dumb opinions (why hello there philosophy teacher), earned me some kind of respect. I didn't get in other people's lives, they didn't get in mine. After the first delusion, that was all that I ended up wishing for. In my disinterest for most things, I was happy. Somehow, I had ended up making friends, and even though I had stopped studying and getting good grades, I received the grant for IB. The next year, however, several adversities found me at the very same time. The collapse of romantic delusions and other false expectations, a love rejection stupidly prolonged in time (precisely wasting the only months of my life in which I had been rejecting girls myself), the pressure of having a tight schedule in which I had to dedicate too much time to study stuff I didn't care about, while the subjects I was interested in was advancing way too slow... I quit High School. I got in depression, quit High School against my friends, family, classmates and teachers recommendations, and three months later, after I had got more perspective, I regretted it and came back, but it was too late. Not paying attention in class and catching up with your classmates' notes later is one thing, but completely leaving HS during a trimester, only to come back some time before the final exams... I failed completely the first one, realized the situation, and didn't attend to any other test. I had to repeat the grade - this time in regular High School (logically, they wouldn't give another grant to someone at my situation), got distanced from my friends and fell, again, further in depression. Drama. I suspect I've got deviated from the main topic, so back to it. A couple of years after that, after I had gotten new friends and stuff, they all agreed in that I was charismatic.... !?!?!?¿¡!? To my surprise, I hadn't realized that, even though I had been going through so much bullshit, I had finally developed social skills up to the point that I didn't have to consciously act to express my feelings or thoughts. My whole perspective of life might have crashed and all, but hey, at least I excelled at overcoming my social awkwardness. (Yay.) My other big symptom associated with Asperger is obsessions. Once I take a particular interest in something, my mind enters in a train route that forces me to keep thinking about it. This has both positive and negatives consequences: I can easily spend hours and hours learning about something (be it learning click optimization or tactics in AoE or something more useful, such as programming), but I can't easily choose what my next obsession will be, so it can get really troublesome some times ("You have had a fight with your girlfriend and didn't solve it yet? FUCK YOU, you are not going to sleep tonight" my mind, making a worryingly accurate prediction). I haven't been as successful with this, and it's getting increasingly annoying lately. In any case, there's as much intelligent and stupid people with Asperger as there are without it, so I'd gladly get rid of it If I could. Edit: Several typos corrected.

I don't know how things work over there, but in Spain, missing to go to work for a few days immediately means that you lose your job (unless you have a very valid reason AND a very good relation with the owner of the business), which can easily escalate into being evicted and socially excluded in a couple of months. Thus, If he had been in a social or economic position that meant either taking the alternative penalty or falling further into poverty, he would have been indeed coerced. Had there been any kind of economic pressure, his girlfriend would have also been coerced, either by emotional or financial reasons. 1) The judge was giving his own religious beliefs enough value as to allow someone to avoid jail time If he writes them over and over in hand, as If he was a kid. He's perfectly free to give them such a value in his free time, but not when he's representing the state. 2) If he wanted the condemned to copy over and over on paper an ethical dogma (such as the bible verses), he could have made him copy parts of text of the criminal code - specifically the ones for which he was condemned guilty. It wouldn't have put any system of beliefs (or the lack of any) over another, the judge wouldn't have cleaned his balls using the Constitution, and the condemned would have learnt some criminal law. And it wouldn't have been a dogma the judge himself chose to believe in, but a pact of the society which could be changed If the society uses the required means to do so. Which totally kills the reason to be for a Constitution, which is to prevent the State (and its representatives) from making abuse of power. TL;DR: Calling the condemned an idiot when you don't know his personal circumstances nor why he took the choices he did is deeply disrespectful, specially If, by doing so, you shift the focus of the criticism from a representative of the State who is making abuse of power, doesn't respect the condemned's Constitutional rights and ignores the separation between Church and State, SPECIALLY when we are talking about a JUDGE, who is required to have studied all of this in order to get his position.

All of that is true, but it only makes it worse. Solaris is murdering people and causing disasters because he wants to change the world for the better (even If we could prove, without a chance of being mistaken, that his posture is incoherent or irrational), Fern supports such a group and everything they're doing because he's an attention whore, because he's a spoiled brat, maybe even without any considerations at all of the grand scheme. Having said this, I loved the "Fern was here. MC is a loser." graffiti - ...And obviously, Blake is worse.

I keep reading "bad guys" this and "bad guys" that, and even If it's a bit off-topic, I wanted to mention that both Team Meteor and the Arceus' crazy freaks zealots have systems of beliefs that lead them to think that THEY are the good guys. Good and evil are relative, they think they are doing greater good to the world (or, at least, the new world) that is far beyond their crimes they have to commit for it - and, of course, they have no reason to treat their Pokemon in a bad way. The exception to all of this is Fern. Fern is just a jerk. Keep hating him.

Persona 4. I was enjoying it at first like a regular game, but the character of Naoto touched me in a personal way. Spoilers incoming.

Thanks to everyone for the responses, it seems like a really solid base to put my feet on.

I meant some normal games, I already proved everything I wanted to proof to myself in ranked last year and it isn't a experience I'm eager to repeat.

Well, I finally decided to give it another try to the game. Anyone in EUW willing to carry someone who hasn't played in almost a year?

I finally have enough 3DS games in my wishlist to justify the purchase, but MONEY ISSUES happen. I have been thinking in buying a secondhand console and games online, but I have never done anything similar, so I was expecting someone of you could share experiences with what sites are trustworthy, what guarantees I will have about the items being in a good condition, etc.

Steam ID: Kiroen There are other 2 who share that nickname, but only I have this guy as avatar: I play on Emperor, and sometimes immortal, but I can always drag Huggyboo to an absolutely not illogical M.A.D. to have tons of fun so everyone has a chance

Saved in bookmarks from back when I still played HS: https://imgur.com/a/czNzP#eU6y7Je

It's nice to see your interest in the debate, this is going to be absorbing The fact that we're unable to feel enough empathy towards hundreds of millions of people explains why we aren't rioting for world hunger, but that has nothing to do with the fact that those conditions are perpetuated because we live under a globalized capitalist system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_theory Trying to sum it up with an example: African children and their mothers mine and sell coltan; due to the vast amount of uneducated workers in Africa and the lack of need for other jobs, illiterate work has a low trade value (workers compete between themselves); Apple buys the coltan at a very low price to make tablets at USA or China and they make a ton of money. The coltan mines may be owned by a local oligarch, and it may turn out that coltan is scarce and the local oligarch actually receives a ton of money from Apple too, but instead of using the acquired capital in improving the workers' conditions he becomes an Apple's shareholder, because If his region's workers actually had access to education, the jobs market at SadFacesColtanMineTM's region would provoke that the people working at the mine would demand higher salaries, because If they didn't receive it, they'd happen to have an alternative. Going a step further away that the Dependency theory goes, it also turns that African governments are specially weak, and by deciding to take social (or at the very least, patriotic) policies and raising the minimum wage by decree (or actually creating a minimum wage), it may turn out that a bunch of these local oligarchs make calcs and decide that buying weapons from American or Russian private armament companies and giving them to a bunch of fanatics that put the government in check, is actually worth the risk. And we couldn't pretend that our countries would be free or responsibility, because from the very moment that we allow weapon companies to become a financial product in stock markets, we are actually allowing people from our countries to gamble in favor of new wars breaking. Higher investment in weapon companies -> more supply -> less expensive weapons -> cheaper to start new wars. I'll start by inviting you to reread my previous post, because communication failed at some point. I'll have to use more measured expressions, for the sake of the debate. I didn't mean that every person has been convinced forever, but that everyone ends up experimenting it (usually before reaching adult age). Further than that, there are huge differences between people. There is people (according to my experience, few) who has no problem in having an austere life, carefully considering what luxuries will bring them a better quality of life and even happiness, without little influence of advertising; but believing that it's within everyone's reach to easily achieve that is simply naive. An example a bit alien to us men, is how women are expected to continuously renew their dressing. Encouraged by seasonal advertising campaigns, it's obvious that the media is able to promote (with a lot of success) consumerism, up to the point that not precisely few women suffer stress If they think their image isn't good enough for their circle's standards. An ex girlfriend of mine had similar concerns with consumerism, she often complained about how women were usually seen as less valuable basing on their looks, EVEN by fellow women, she didn't understand why she had to worry about how people she didn't care about saw her, and yet she suffered because of it; simply because of social pressure. A social pressure that advertising companies actively promote and exploit. One thing are tools that allow people to easily find products and services that may improve their lives, and a very different one is the advertising bombardment we live under. For further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters Maybe the fact that I'm tired has something to do with this, but I don't get what you're referring to. As for the Chinese, in case it wasn't obvious, I don't have any problem with Chinese people, but with Chinese international companies (and you can actually change 'Chinese' by many other nationalities depending on the region and historical time). Maybe I was too enthusiastic in presenting the issue in a very systematical way: how parties make their finances varies greatly from country to country, to the point that your statement ["but banks are very rarely involved like you state. It's too much money with a high risk of not getting their money back, so banks generally have no interest themselves in such an investment."] is 100% false in my country, Spain*; while it may be really accurate for yours (*it's well known around here that Spanish banks forgive debts to the parties that legislate in favor of their interests). However, was it THAT different taking your example into account? If private fortunes can't directly bribe the party or candidate in question, they recur to the advertising of ideas that benefits them (be it by giving better positions to opinion makers with aligned interests in the mass media or by promoting lobbies that influence powerful individuals). Oh, and then there's the extreme but not so uncommon case of rich people presenting themselves to elections and winning them, usually making use of their accumulated capital for it. Have you heard of Cañete? He is the Commissioner of Energy and Climate Action in the European Union, from Spain. Thankfully, several activists convoked demonstrations to make known the fact that he had important shares in oil companies (wolf watching the sheeps? Hello?), which is illegal according to the laws of the EU... So he sold those shares to his brother in law. I don't quite understand how capitalism isn't related to this. Blaming it on the human's nature seems like the easiest way to deal with it, but I don't think that will make the world a place any better when I'm retired and want to live the rest of my days without being concerned about my grandchildren having any kind of future. That is, If I have any kind of good future myself. It may be disgusting to fight against it, but If the play's curtain isn't tore out by the people who knows that it's rigged, it won't be revealed as what it is until it's too late. And @Jericho: No hurries, I understand that this takes a lot of time and we don't always have it.

There is a big fallacy in there, allow me to explain. A) Under capitalism, products/services are provided to those who have money; B ) Under capitalism, there are bigger concentrations of wealth under fewer hands as time goes on (as explained earlier); C) As one person accumulates exponential amounts of wealth, he spends a lesser percentage of his income in luxuries/needs (at the very least, statistically); D) Progressive taxes and certain spending or investments by the state allow redistribution of wealth. Now, If there is an increasing concentration of wealth in fewer hands, and these people will be less likely to buy products/services; there will actually be less incentives to create productive companies, because they will simply not have as high perspectives of making business. This actually provokes a really inefficient use of the capital, where it becomes accumulated without purpose to the point that there is nothing more productive to invest it in than stock-market gambling. However, redistribution of wealth solves the problem. The bold characters statement was one of the reasons why the USSR collapsed. While an ample group of technicians (whether they work for the state or for a company) are able to plan a country's industrialization far better than any random "entrepreneur", If any closed group of technicians pretend to plan the whole economy, many bright or simply useful ideas that any random entrepreneur may have will find no way to be implemented. There are just sectors that are more efficient when planned (such as the roads infrastructures) or are simply natural monopolies (it's ridiculous to allow competence in water pipes, for example); and there are other sectors of the economy that are less efficient when planned by a Leningrad's bureaucrat. However, one thing is the state vs entrepreneur debate, and a very different one is the question of who owns the capital: individuals or society (be it administrated by a centralist state or by cooperatives/public banks/municipal funds/etc.etc.etc.. I don't want to sound bold or aggressive, but this is just propaganda. Every single economic system we have seen until today has had positions where there were high and low meritocratic incentives. What incentive is there to work for a rich individual who can live from his rents? What incentive is there to work harder for a waitress exploited by her boss, being paid a miserable salary? No one has put in question the need of having meritocratic incentives, and there actually were many of these in the USSR (which I'm not proposing as a model). (Before actually proposing any short or long term alternative, I'm going to wait for Jericho's response on the first quote)

Did you have Pokesnacks in the bag?

"It's nice to own you" during the obedience run, or some other bold line. It's quite simple. Those who have related experiences are just more likely to remember them, and the emotions attached to them. Also, depending on a person's empathy, some may be able to understand the subtle hints to a deeper grade, such as the constant insults turning the world into a weird, abstract set of squares, probably portraying the victim's sinking to madness/emotional instability.

In case that anyone is interested, I made an Immortal Earth map LP series that got a lot of success at its day in the Civ subreddit: If you want a tip, try to be very selective with the content you end up putting in the album. Long entries usually scare people, as they don't know If it will be worth their time and they'll be more likely to not to start reading it at all. I usually took about 100 screenshots per chapter, but they ended up having between 15 and 25 after planning how I would tell an interesting story.

There are probably several endings. I played twice (always disobeying on the first run, always obeying on the second one) and the narrator closed with lines different that yours. As Cepheus said, it's hard to get too emotionally involved in such a short game (unless you have been close to similar situations irl), but the effort is appreciated. I think our societies could easily change for the better If at least 1 out of 10 AAA games would put effort in introducing people in today's world problems - it's a real shame how we aren't exploiting video games educational possibilities...

This is a really dangerous argument, not only because it leads us to a very conservative approach to the possibility of changing things ("things are actually really fucked up" but "it could be worse" -> "better leave them be than try to change for the better"), but because from an historical perspective, it's easy to see that no system (be it political or economical) has an undefined useful lifetime. Feudalism thrived for over a thousand years, but it finally died to mercantilism, which died to laissez faire, which died to interventionism, which died to neoliberalism. A prestigious scientist and aristocrat had the opinion that we had reached the pinnacle of science and progress; it was a really propagated idea - yet short years later mankind saw flight be born and Einstein started to shake the classical physics foundations. A hundred years ago, those who had power spread the idea that paid holidays or finishing child labor would provoke the system to collapse - yet today those are basic rights defended by the majority. It's funny how so many people recur to the images of Hitler or Stalin when someone presents the idea of an alternative to capitalism - yet so few see that capitalism is killing way more people than anyone ever accused communism of killing, today. According to the UN, 24.000 persons die each day from hunger. If an economic system's purpose is to provide people with their basic needs, and once these are satisfied, provide luxuries too, why isn't there a strong speech that denounces the victims of capitalism? We have the capital, the physical resources to provide everyone in the world with food, yet 100 million people die from hunger in the world each ~15 years. Take the worst communist dystopia any propagandist could have ever imagined: we live in it. Capitalism rules the vast majority of the world, yet with its huge power it isn't solving any of the big problems the mankind has. And taking a more practical approach to your concern: I haven't proposed in any moment to violently overthrow capitalism - not even any legal system. Such formulas don't provide any guarantee of success. And please, let's not ridicule proposals of change with vague threats of a terrible, dystopian society, because hundreds of millions of people already live under ours. I agree that intervened capitalism has created the most prosperous societies mankind has ever seen until today, but we have to ask ourselves: why have we been moving backwards during the last decades? Among social scientists (If there is such a thing such as "social science") there's a theory gaining weight every year: capitalism could be tamed during most of 20th century because the richest individuals and collectives were afraid. After WWII, many Western European countries began nationalizations of big companies - specially those whose owners had been collaborating with fascism; they started coining money in huge amounts to organize the efforts of rebuilding the countries - yet no big proprietaries complained. After WWII, the French and Italian Communist parties were close to their max height, simply because millions of people in those countries believed that there was an alternative to capitalism. When the USSR economy began to stagnate and Western Berlin had became the biggest showcase of capitalism, it started the neoliberal cycle: it was the age of Thatcher and Reagan, the age when even the new social democrat parties in Europe (those of Spain, Portugal and Greece) were born under the ideological banner of capitalism without regulations - because regulations did no longer seem necessary to capitalism's survival [Note: notice that I haven't actually defended the Eastern Bloc at any line, what it matters to this theory is only the people's perception to it during each period]. If this isn't true, you are going to need to bring another theory that explains why capitalism can't be tamed today, why the vast majority of European parties actually tolerate capitalism's excesses in practice (the speech matters little when their actions show the opposite). There's no doubt that many defense ministries are black holes of corruption for money. I have the intuition that, If people actually learnt a bit of geopolitics in high school, we'd be able to avoid several of today's wars, as people would be more aware of the use of violence for the mere profit of certain companies (it doesn't take too much work to trace the financing of international relations lobbies by energy corporations). I mean - it's so obvious for anyone who studies the issue that I don't understand how there aren't big national debates about it. I'll eventually propose practical solutions , but I think that there are some issues that should be discussed first.